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Report: Google Play Finally Passes iOS App Store In Number Of Apps, Developers

2014 was a big year for apps and developers according to several sources.

Greg Sterling on January 13, 2015 at 9:44 am

According to data from appFigures, Google Play finally passed The App Store (Apple) in number of total mobile apps. It thus also makes sense that there are now more app developers supporting Android than Apple or Amazon’s mobile platforms.

There’s no mention of Windows Phone in the company’s report. Microsoft said last year that there were more than 300,000 Windows Phone apps available, which represents impressive year-over-year growth. Microsoft’s mobile device share remains static however.

Google play now boasts 1.43 million apps vs. 1.21 million for Apple and 293,000 for Amazon, says appFigures. Google has 388,000 developers working on the platform vs. Apple’s 282,000 and Amazon’s 48,000. In a large number of cases, however, these are the same developers working on multiple platforms.

By comparison Apple itself says that its App Store has “more than 1.4 million apps,” which conflicts with the appFigures contention above.

Source appFigures (2015)

The fastest growth app categories for the Android and iOS platforms are quite different however, which may reflect the relative maturity of the two platforms. It could also be a function of smartphone-owner demographics as well.

Fastest growth app categories (per appFigures):

Apple:

Business
Food & Drink
Lifestyle
Social networking
Catalogs

Google:

Games
Photography
Music
Business
Entertainment

Separately App Annie announced a new suite of app analytics capabilities this morning. Called Usage Intelligence, the tool offers engagement metrics such as active users, time spent, frequency and retention. App Annie adds those data capabilities to existing metrics on downloads, app revenues and audience demographics.

There’s a race going on to build the Google Analytics of the app world. Flurry was the early leader and was recently acquired by Yahoo. Localytics is another leader. Beyond those, there are at least a dozen other companies offering varying flavors of app analytics — which we might call “appalytics.”

Almost 90 percent of mobile usage time — now greater than TV — is spent with apps. However in the US market a relatively few large companies dominate the top charts in terms of time spent and app penetration.

Last week Apple said that apps generated more than $10 billion for developers in 2014. The company also asserted that the “iOS ecosystem” had created 627,000 jobs in the US over the past six years.

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.