Android is on course to have more mobile apps than iOS within 18 months and curiously Android developers each create more apps than iOS developers.

The February 2011 report from mobile security company Lookout of its App Genome Project, set up to monitor mobile applications across multiple mobile platforms and app markets has some interesting statistics for app developers.

Although though there are more total apps in the Apple App Store, the Android Market’s relative growth rate is nearly three times that of the Apple App Store and if each market continues to grow at the same rate, the Android Market will have more apps than the Apple App Store by mid 2012. 

To summarise its findings, which relate to the U.S:

• The number of apps available on the Android Market increased approximately 127% since August 2010, while the Apple App Store grew at a relative rate of 44%.
• The Apple App Store is still ahead of total apps with nearly 350,000, 100,000 of which have been added in the past 6 months.
• The Android Market has fewer apps, at nearly 90k, but has added nearly 50k in the last 6 months, more than doubling its size. 

The February report also reveals that over the past 6 months, the Android Market has seen an influx of paid apps. In contrast, the Apple App Store has seen an increase in the proportion of free apps.

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As the above chart shows the Android Market saw paid apps grow from 22% to 34% during the past 6 months while paid apps in the Apple App Store decreased from 70% to 66%. it also found that the prices charged for paid Android apps shifted upwards while those for Apple remained steady, as shown below:

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In February 2011 the price profile for apps in the Apple and Android markets was fairly similar but there was a smaller proportion of Android apps selling for less than a  dollar.

The number of developers in the Apple App Store (24,000) greatly exceeded the number in the Android Market (4,000) in the six months to February 2011 but an intriguing finding is that the Android Market generally has more apps per developer than the App Store. The average number of apps submitted per developer is 6.6 in the Android Market and 4.8 in the App Store. What explains this difference in productivity is difficult to say but it might have something to do with the ease of getting an app accepted by each of the app markets.

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The above chart shows that 8.4% of Android developers compared to 6.1 of iOS developers produced more than 10 apps each and 45% produced a single app compared to 52%.

Whatever the reason for this discrepancy the advent of Android tablet devices means there will be plenty of scope for its developers in the coming months.

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See also:

The remarkable spread of Android