Googles Play Store to have 1 million apps before Apple?

In what may be a surprise to some, experts are claiming that Googles play store will have one million apps available to users by June of this year, beating Apples app store to the celebrated milestone figure despite Apple having had a head start by several months.

Analysts at Sociable have calculated that the play store will reach the coveted one million app goal before their main rival, Apple and, with the number of apps in a market often being used by fans or critics of an OS to show why one is better or worse than another reaching this goal will bring yet more publicity Androids way.

Despite being four times more profitable than the play store, Apples app store has been unable to match the revenue growth of its rival with Androids revenue growing by almost 330 percent last year while Apples app revenue increased by just under thirteen.

What that means in real terms is that Apples store still makes a lot more money, but Androids is catching up.

There are of course multiple factors involved, Android is free for manufacturers to use and as a consequence has become the most popular operating system worldwide, whereas Apples iOS runs only on Apple devices and naturally this gives Android app developers a distinct advantage when it comes to reaching potential customers.

Except that apparent advantage is also seen by many as a disadvantage. Apple owners are more likely to purchase an app than those with Android, as a result there are more free apps on play store which of course is a win for people running the Android operating system but could it be a win for developers?

A sizeable number of Android apps now come with both free and paid for versions of their apps, free versions typically serve banner advertisements and these can be removed by buying the ad free version.

Another, somewhat less popular, move has been for some apps (notably games) to charge for certain items within the game environment while keeping the app itself free to play.

The increasing adoption of Android coupled with these new approaches to earning revenue from Android applications makes it an increasingly popular choice for developers and this has driven the play stores massive growth.

Of course if Google do indeed beat their rivals to the one million app milestone you can rest assured that, as with previous Android milestones, Google will ensure the play store has another suitably enticing offer to celebrate.