App store war: Will Android reign?

By Kukil Bora, SiliconIndia   |   Friday, 15 October 2010, 11:07 IST
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Bangalore: Since its announcement in August 2008, Android Market, the official online app store for Android devices has shown an impressive growth rate in terms of applications available for download. Recently, the app store has surpassed the level of 10,000 additional applications in a month. With merely 2,300 downloadable applications till March 2009, the app store has reached at more than 80,000 applications by August this year. These figures show a clear picture of the increasing growth of Android Market and give the app store a competitive edge over its counterparts in the so called Android Market vs. other app stores war. Let's analyze the points that make Android Market a better choice over the other app stores like Apple App Store, Windows Marketplace, Blackberry App World and Nokia Ovi Store. As per a report by app store analytics tool Distimo, Android Market leads in terms of free apps available for download. It has over 57 percent of apps being free to download, which is double the amount of 28 percent of free apps in Apple's App Store. Android Market stands far ahead than the Nokia Ovi Store, Blackberry App World and Windows Marketplace, with Ovi Store and App World having 26 percent of free apps and Windows Marketplace having only 22 percent. Unlike Apple's App Store, which is the only way of installing apps in iPhone, there is no requirement that Android apps need to be acquired from Android Market only. Users can find Android apps in any source including a developer's own website or any of the third party alternatives to Android Market. Internet retailer Amazon.com is contemplating on building its own mobile application store for Android devices that would likely appear on Amazon's own Android-based tablet computers. Verizon has also announced VCAST, its own Android app store which will appear on its Android-based smartphones. Although from one side these additional sources for Android apps create new platforms for application developers to showcase their apps, they may confuse users since there is no one central place to download apps as there is with Apple and its iTunes property. Another positive aspect of Android Market is that app developers receive 70 percent of the application price, while the remaining 30 percent is distributed among carriers and payment processors. The Android Market, which is teeming with useful applications today, also has Sun Microsystems' (acquired by Oracle) App Store for Java in its list of close competitors. According to Jonathan Schwartz, who was the CEO of Sun Microsystems up to the acquisition by Oracle, with potential audience of one billion users, Sun's App Store could become the biggest app store of all. No doubt, Google's Android Market is on pace to increase the number of applications in times to come, but we have to agree to the fact that it still needs a vast overhaul to catch up Apple App Store, which offers 2,50,000 apps. In addition, 70 percent of App Store apps are paid, whereas in the Android Market only 36 percent are paid.