Google said during the company's earnings call on Thursday that more than 3 billion apps have been installed from the Android Market so far, and around 350,000 smartphones are activated every day. The new figures highlight the exceptional growth of Android, but when it comes to app stores, Apple's is still king.
It didn't take Google long to reach the 3 billion downloaded apps milestone for the Android Market. It took 20 months to reach 1 billion apps installed; the second billion took another five months; and then it took only two months for Google to reach 3 billion -- a 50 per cent increase from the previous quarter.
However, it's unclear how Google counted the app installs, if it included third-party stores (like Amazon's), or just the Android Market. Electronista's hunch is that all stores were included in Google's count. The balance between paid and free apps is also unspecified.
Impressive Android Market stats aside, Apple's App Store is still at the top. Apple announced earlier this year that its marketplace reached 10 billion downloads, more than three times more than Android's performance. When it comes to the number of apps, Apple rules too: the App Store has more than 350,000 apps, while the Android Market clocks in at an estimated half of that number.
Google also confirmed that Android is now seeing around 350,000 activations per day, which would mean that roughly around 10.5 million Android devices are sold per month. Apple did not recently disclose how many iOS devices it activates per day, which were 270,000 at the last count in October 2010; this number, however, could match Google's, considering the launch of the iPhone on Verizon and the iPad 2.
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