Google Play, an app store run by Google Inc., has been showing swift and impressive growth ever since its launch in 2012, never slowing down and slowly but steadily catching up with its main competitor, App Store owned by Apple Inc. And after recent slowdown at Apple, it seems that Google Play can realistically close the gap completely within a year or two.
According to Tech Blog , Google’s Play store has earned over $7 billion over the last 12 months, which gets closer and closer to apparent App Store’s results.
“[L]ifetime figures: by the end of last year, for instance, it said that app developers ‘have earned over $25bn from the App Store to date.’ That is up from the ‘over $15bn’ it announced the year before, implying developers made $10bn or more in the latest 12 months.”
Despite the vagueness of figures released by Apple, it implies that the iOS app market is going through a period of apparent slowdown, and if this situation keeps up, it menaces one of the strongest selling points of Apple’s smartphone operating system to developers: that they can make more money working with Apple than otherwise.
Google’s progress is clearly seen not just in overall incomes, but also in others statistics. According to the Inquisitr , as of now Google’s Play store has more developers and apps for sale than App Store:
“Google Play exceeded the Apple store with the number of applications available for the first time, and Google has more developers that Apple for the third year in a row. Google Play Store now holds impressive 1.43 million applications compared to 1.21 million featured by Apple’s App Store. Amazon’s mobile application store is on the market too, but it has been left far behind with around 293,000 mobile apps.”
In spite of the fantastic popularity of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, the app market for iOS still didn’t manage to recover. It may be a part of an overarching trend, or probably Android has acquired a lot of momentum over the last few years and didn’t use it all up yet.
However, the results shown by all three major app stores show the same thing: this market is growing, and growing fast. All three stores have grown by at least 50 percent over the last year, with Google Play showing the best result — a whopping 105 percent growth.
