Social Machinery

Google’s Android OS is growing exponentially driven by a massive amount of handsets based on the new mobile OS that are coming to the market. Also, Android seems to be the perfect marketplace for new applications development due to their “open” source and their application store.

And it looks like developers are supporting this platform: Android already has more than 16.000 applications. Still far below App store´s 100.000 applications but quite impressive if you think the little time Android supported mobiles have been available.

At the beginning Android Market was growing quite steady mainly because their initial handset strategy only supported one handset: HTC Dream, which at that time was little known in the handset industry. But after only few months, HTC managed to get a bigger share of Smartphone´s market and to bring a wider line of mobiles supporting Google’s mobile OS. Besides, more and more handsets manufacturers are using Android as their preferred OS platform for next generation mobiles.

Therefore,  things look quite positive for Google’s mobile strategy and as AndroidLab informed, the site already have a search engine showing 20.000 applications launched for Android Market. According to AndroidLab, 38% of all Android Market applications are paid. The other 62% are free to use applications.

If we compared with Google’s statistics about Android Market on September 2009 when they claimed only 10.000 applications, Android has been adding around 80 applications per day.

Analysts predict a 2010 full of Applications

Developers and application stores momentum will continue to grow dramatically boosted by Android and Iphone platforms. Taking in consideration that Apple Appstore is closing this 2009 with more than 100.000 listed on Itunes, up from 10,000 a year ago, they’ve reached an annual growth rate of 900%.

This is just astonishing if you compared it with platforms like Windows PC where you only have 10.000 applications listed. IDC researchers expected at least 300.000 Iphone applications by the end of 2010. This means something like 600 applications approved and onboard on Itunes every day. According to this analyst firm, most of the applications will be developed by consumer brands in order to attract consumers.

When it comes to Google Android, most of the analysts predict that they will be a strong ramp of applications available on Android Market.  Google should expect between 40.000 to 80.000 applications during 2010. Even do this numbers are far below Apple’s App store, it means between 50-100 applications onboard every day on Android Market during 2010. Main reason for this growth is the openness of Android compared to Iphone “walled garden” platform. Therefore, developers will find increasingly attractive to develop applications on different device manufacturers’ hardware for reaching a wider audience.