Latest news,Android Market contains in excess of 10,000 applications, 35.5% of paid apps, 64.5% of free apps,See below figure. Although without doubt 10,000 applications is a considerable catalogue, 148apps.biz is reporting that 76,085 applications are currently available in the Apple App Store.
Why android market increase so slow? please write your comments, we, starlipse , as a professional android outsourcing service provider,we have talked with our consumers, most of them think the cost cannot be recovered. do you think so?
You will soon see the market explode for Android. The reason:
Android is open, iPhone is proprietry.
This means that any vendor can put the android system onto there phone. Apple would never give the rights to there software away.
The first android phone (G1) was the size of a brick, this put lots of people off purchasing it. At this time Apple was capitalizing with a slick well marketed phone.
Now Android have got there act together they now have phone which look and feel as good (personally, better) than the iPhone. Already this year the market share for Android has increased dramatically. Now developers see the increasing spread of Android you will see many more app being developed/ imported from the iPhone.
You'll also see development increasing because more and more developers will be leaving apple after the frustration of either being denied or being lost in the shuffle. For the 100,000 advertised iPhone appls, there's probably at least that many that have been denied, and according to all sources nobody is making very much money on iPhone apps. This is partly due to the fact that there's thousands of "get sports scores" apps, but also because of rampant piracy. I haven't heard much about android piracy, but iPhone piracy has been making the news for quite a while. Maybe if Google can figure out a way to flag retail products for use on a particular phone/account, developers burned by Apple piracy will move to Android.
-Dan
Android phones simply don't have the fanboy following apple has. When Apple releases some new product Apple fanboys have to go and buy it. Bam! immediately huge sales. For android on the other hand there is no such thing. People buy it generally because they like the phone or because they are curious. Since there are so few models around this results in a much slower growth of user base. It will pick up over time.
I too think the Android platform has a lot of potential. For one thing the SDK is freely and easily available which is something you don't see often in the mobile phone market. Also programming in Java has a lot more appeal to me than hacking away with some C/C++ libraries or HTML/Javascript. Further the whole idea on how to structure the applications, breaking away from the established monolithic paradigm and dividing it into simpler more lightweight parts is very interesting. And yeah. The whole issue with the Iphone's appstore being so picky, pissed of a lot of developers - both current and potential ones. Apple is accustomed to people just swallowing what they hand out but apparently even Apple users have their limits... And this is going to hurt them in the long run.
It doesn't help that the G1 was a piece of garbage. Slow, not enough memory, spotty hardware performance, and locked to the country's fourth most popular cell service. Now that the sufficiently badass Droid is on the market on Verizon, you should see a serious increase in the marketshare.
One thing that Google needs to do before the phone really takes off is take care of all the little things. Apple is famous for their attention to detail, and the Android OS is still unfinished. For instance:
When I click the multifunction button on my bluetooth, nothing happens. Nothing. On my $40 dumb phone, it starts voice dial. On an iPhone, it starts voice dial. On an Android phone, nothing happens.
When I get an email and click on "one new email from Joe" in the alerts window, it takes me to my inbox. I need to click again to get to Joe's email.
Call waiting and caller ID are sloppy and slow.
The touch keypad locks after 2 seconds, even if you have it on speaker or bluetooth. Unlocking the touch keypad requires bumping the screen between 2 and 4 times, which can sometimes result in you accidentally dialing a digit you didn't want to. Makes phone trees hell.
Better hardware and a better carrier are good news for the Android platform. What they need to do now is concentrate on the fact that it's a PHONE. Even if they have to branch the Android OS into "phones" and "other," do it. When I pick up a phone, the absolute top priority of the device should be "be a phone." With Android, the top priority is "web enabled device," with "phone" being second or third (behind "toy"). Until "making phone calls" is the focus on my phone, I'll always be annoyed with it.
-Dan
On my $40 dumb phone, it starts voice dial. On an iPhone, it starts voice dial. On an Android phone, nothing happens.You know: The googles, they do nothing...
apple (and iphone) users generally have more disposable income, meaning they are easier to sell to, meaning more developers are willing to develop apps - because they 'paid' audience is wider.
Andriod is more for opensource fanboys - people who want things for free. So its hard to sell to them, and that means it doesnt provide much motivation for app developers.
Wow, I don't think...any of that is true.
apple (and iphone) users generally have more disposable incomeMost of the country owns an apple product of one form or another. The iPhone is the most popular smart phone in the country. It is not a luxury good available only to the super-rich.
more disposable income, meaning they are easier to sell toHave you ever tried to sell something to a rich person? They don't get rich by wasting their money on a copy of pacman for their phone.
more developers are willing to develop apps - because they 'paid' audience is wider.Ok, THIS may be true. Similar to why Windows has more apps bangning around the internet than Mac: the bigger target audience grabs more developers. It's the same reason more English-language movies are made than French or German. However, in terms of a fast-growing industry like mobile phones, developers have to consider (a) which industry will be larger in 3 years, (b) which phone is easiest to develop on so I can get my apps out there, and (c) which app store has the easiest policies, so I'm not stuck fighting to sell my first copy. Android wins in all 3 categories.
Andriod is more for opensource fanboysYou think Verizon did a multi-million-dollar ad campaign, including signs in every mall in the country, because they were trying to reach the elusive "open source fanboy" market? The Droid is designed for the mass market, I'm willing to bet fewer than 10% of the people who own a Droid know that it runs Linux.
opensource fanboys - people who want things for free.Err...no. If the open source community was geared toward getting free stuff, they would have imploded long ago. While it's true that more developers will develop free apps for an open platform than a closed one, all that means is that Android has a higher number of quality free apps.
So its hard to sell to them, and that means it doesnt provide much motivation for app developers.People who want things for free are generally very easy to sell to, because they respond very strongly to sales, deals, and prizes. That's why things like sales, deals, and prizes exist: to suck in all the people who want something for free, and then convince them to buy something once they're inside. I once bought an android app because I liked the free one and the paid one was on sale.
Necroing this thread for 2 reasons:
1) Android just out-paced the iPhone in terms of domestic mobile market share.
2) The Android Market now boasts more than 30,000 apps, with a growth rate that suggests the number will double before the end of the year.
The Droid most certainly helped, since Verizon's ad campaign was significantly stronger than T-Mobile's. Also, the droid doesn't suck like the G1 did.
Personally, I'm dying for someone to make a Nexus One with a keyboard, then I can get a real phone with a nice screen. I'm very pleased with the apps available in the Market, I haven't seen anything on the iPhone that makes me want one over the Android platform.
-Dan
I agree with what has been said here.
It is just a matter of time before the android market place explodes
Right now android is still in the early adopter stage. Wait a couple of years, and the market will be ginormous when the masses start using android. Check out the theory of "Diffusion of innovations"