Android Market catching up with iTunes

Life

26 October 2010

Google has revealed that its Android marketplace is now offering more than 100,000 apps. The disclosure, though, did little to quell grumblings from Android developers over the marketplace’s operation.

The revelation from Google was made without fanfare through a post on Twitter simply stating “one hundred thousand apps in Android Market.”

Android developers have been slower to bring their programs to market than their main competitors, Apple – itself not short of criticism for the approval process on the iTunes App Store.

While it has taken 20 months for the Android Marketplace to hit 100,000, Apple’s App Store did it in 16 months. That may not be surprising to some observers. Selling apps for Android hasn’t had the monetary rewards selling them for Apple’s mobile products has had for some developers.

One problem often cited about the Android Marketplace is its purchasing scheme. It uses Google Checkout. A more popular scheme like PayPal might be better suited to induce the kind of impulse purchasing that app sales thrive on.

Another rub for developers in the Android world is hardware diversity. Apple presents developers with a unified platform. What works on the iPhone works on the iPod Touch and the iPad. That’s not the case with Android devices, which can vary depending on who is making the handset.

In addition, the association of “free” with Google isn’t helping developers trying to make some money in the Android Marketplace. To make matters worse, the marketplace only sells paid apps in 32 countries – compared to 90 for Apple.

On a positive note, Google is continually making improvements to the marketplace. For example, it now displays the price of apps in the currency of the buyer, not the seller, and it’s planning to introduce a feature that allows purchases to be made within apps, which should make developing programs for Android even more worthwhile for software writers.

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