Google Play Store has outnumbered Apple App Store in terms of number of apps. According to a report from Appfigures.com, Google Play Store has grown more than Apple in both the number of apps and developers in the year 2014. Google has achieved this feat for the first time in 2014 and the Play Store has released more new apps than App Store released in a given year.
There is a major growth in the number of apps and developers in the Google Play Store, iOS App Store, as well as the Amazon Appstore from 2010 to 2014. Google ended the year 2014 with over 1.43 million published apps, compared to Apple’s 1.21 million. Amazon is still very far behind, finishing the year with only 293,000 apps in all.
Google finished the year with almost 400,000 developers, while Apple nearly made it to 300,000. Amazon is nearing the 50,000 mark to finish out 2014.
Google Play grew in the number of apps by more than a 100 per cent increase, while Amazon grew a bit more than 80 per cent and Apple growing by under 60 per cent in 2014. Additionally, more developers joined Google Play in 2014 than Amazon and Apple combined. The Google Play Store now has 388,000 developers on the Android platform, compared to Apple’s 282,000 and Amazon’s 48,000.
Category-wise Google Play’s Games and Photography apps have seen tremendous increase, while Apple’s Food & Drinks and Business apps have the most downloads.
The growth of the Google Play Store is mainly because of the popularity of Android OS and also because of the number of manufacturers that ship Android devices. Also, the difference may have a lot to do with the way Google and Apple publish apps in their respective stores. Apple has a more rigorous app approval process before anything can get published, while Google is a tad more lenient up front, then fixes problems and violations after the app is published.