Android market hits 500,000 ssuccessful apps submissions

PanARMENIAN.Net - Mobile research firm Research2Guidance said in August that the Android Market would catch the App Store by the end of 2011, ReadWriteWeb reported.

Today it released its September 2011 numbers to show that the Market has achieved half a million successful app submissions, compared to near 600,000 for Apple. Yet, even though an app has been published, that does not mean it stays in the store forever. Apple still has the advantage in application churn rate over Android.

As of the end of the third quarter 2011, the Android Market had 319,161 active applications as compared to 459,589 for the Apple App Store. The churn rate, or applications that have been removed from an app store, was significantly higher for Android at 37% as compared to 24% for the App Store. Research2Guidance added the Windows Phone Marketplace into its study, showing a 13% churn rate.

Over 78% of the apps removed from the Android Market were free, which Research2Guidance believes is a product of the open ecosystem of the market where Android publishers have more apps in the market for testing, demos, trials and malware.

Research2Guidance notes that the Windows Phone Marketplace is on a similar trajectory to Android in terms of removal rates. After 15 months, the 13% churn is comparable to Android at 14% after the same period of time. The firm notes that the cleanup of the Android Market did not come until well after that, near the end of 2010.