Android Market Powering Up — Passes 20,000 Apps
Pundits are predicting a breakout year for Android in 2010. The upstart mobile OS (if you can call anything Google does an ‘upstart’) is earning rave reviews from mobile app developers, and is growing rapidly. And while the Android Market and it’s 20,000 apps have a ways to go before catch up with iPhone and it’s 100,000 approved apps, the growth has been impressive. As we’ve seen time and time again, he who wins the hearts & minds of the development community, wins the battle.
Also helping Android’s case are some great new smartphones from manufacturers like HTC, Motorola and Samsung.
Robin Waulters from TechCrunch wrote a great piece today detailing the milestone and making some predictions for 2010:
2010 is going to be a big year for the Android operating system, with many new handsets finding their way to stores around the world (including Google’s own phone) and an increasing number of developers building tools, games and the likes for the fast-growing platform.
One way of noticing that the OS is poised for a big breakthrough at the expense of Windows Mobile, Symbian and other operating systems designed to run on various mobile devices, is the number of applications already available for download in the platform’s own application store, Android Market.
Waulters cited recently published data from AndroidLib, which showed an wildly impressive growth line for the Android Market (see the chart after the jump):
This prompted a bold prediction from the TechCrunch writer:
My guess Android Market will be serving 50,000 apps as early as Q2 2010.
What do you think? Can the Android Market double in six months? Will Android be able to challenge iPhone?
