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Apple’s App Store today broke
500,000 approved applications, proving that although Android has more users, Apple is still the king of apps.
Early Tuesday morning as Apple reached “another milestone by adding the ” app No. 500,000″ to its popular App store, which as of January, has seen more than 10 billion apps downloaded to its iPhone, iPad and iPod devices. The total number of apps currently available in the store is around 400,000 provided by an impressive 85,569 developers. This is due to older apps being updated and other being taken off the marketplace.
Further to hitting such a monumental milestone in App Store history, some 37 percent (approx. 148,000) of open applications are available for download without charge. And the average purchase price attached to fee-based downloads is a mere $3.64 USD
The statistics show Apple is far ahead of its closest competition, Google, which reached 294,000 apps earlier this month on three billion downloads. Meanwhile, Nokia has around 50,000 apps. To honor the occasion, three companies specializing in iOS apps – game-maker
Chillingo, app search engine
Chomp and app blog
148apps – have created an infographic highlighting some of the most interesting figures related to the vast ecosystem of iOS apps. According to their data, there are 85,569 unique app developers; the most popular iOS app is
Angry Birds, and 37% of iOS apps are free, while another 29% of all apps cost only $0.99.
Research firm iSuppli predicts Apple’s app store revenue will hit $4 billion in 2011, accounting for three-quarters of the total apps sold. Meanwhile, Google recently announced that it would ensure Android products will be promptly upgraded to the latest version of the operating system for at least 18 months after release.
Apple’s selective app policy has proved worthwhile over Android’s Wild West mentality of letting anything and everything into the store.For programmers, Google’s limited sales and software fragmentation makes it less worthwhile to develop games and apps for Android. In a recent survey conducted by DigitalTrends, About 82 percent of developers surveyed said it was hard for their work to get noticed, and 57 percent said they are not satisfied with the revenues generated through the marketplace.