Android Market Surpasses 10 Billion Downloads

Google has announced that 10 billion apps have been downloaded from the Android market.

The company has declared it an “amazing” achievement and claims that the store’s apps are currently being downloaded at a rate of one billion a month.

Accelerated Growth

According to Google, the pace at which apps are being downloaded has reached an unprecedented rate. It took the Android Market 22 months to reach the one billion milestone, but it took just one month for the figure to go from nine billion to ten billion.

As part of its ten day celebration, Google has promised to reduce a number of its most popular apps to the price of just 10p. These include games such as Asphalt 6 and Minecraft and apps such as Soundhound Infinity and Swiftkey X.

Google was keen to praise the Android development community, declaring on its blog, “None of these apps would have existed if it weren’t for the developers who created them. Every day, these developers continue to push the limits on what’s possible and delight us in the process. For that, we thank them.”

Future Threats

The Android Market has gone from strength to strength since it was launched in 2008, introducing a web store in February and passing the 200,000 app milestone in May.

However, it still trails Apple in terms of both apps and downloads, with the App Store currently boasting 425,000 apps and surpassing 15 billion downloads.

The fragmentation of the Android Market has also been a cause for concern for some developers, as has security, with infected apps often appearing on the store. In March, Google removed 50 malicious apps from the market and was forced to make use of the remote kill feature which removed infected apps from affected devices.

Another potential obstacle is the emergence of rival app stores on the open source platform such as the Amazon Appstore for Android, which offers free and paid applications for Android devices.