Google has announced that it has hit the 10 billion app milestone when it comes to the number of downloads from Android Market.
In a post on the company blog, Google boasted that Android apps are accelerating as tons of handsets across the world are activated on a daily basis. Indeed, the app download rate is now increasing by a billion every month.
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Or it certainly has for the past four months – in July, the Android app store had notched up 6 billion downloads. So that makes a million being added every month since then.At the start of this year, the number of apps downloaded was just two billion.The good news is that Google is celebrating this major app milestone by declaring a Christmas sale on apps which should help to spike growth further.
Over the next ten days, a number of apps are going to be discounted to just 10 pence, with a different batch of apps getting this major discount every day. And these are quality offerings, not bargain bucket rubbish.Today’s on-offer apps are: Minecraft Pocket Edition, Asphalt 6: Adrenaline HD, Great Little War Game, Fieldrunners HD, SoundHound, SwiftKey X Keyboard, Endomondo Sports Tracker, Paper Camera, Sketchbook Mobile and Colour & Draw for Kids.
So if you’ve always fancied a pop at Minecraft, now’s the time to grab the mobile edition. Bargain hunters would be well advised to keep checking every day to see which new offers pop up over the next week and a half.How’s Google doing compared to Apple’s mighty app offerings, then? It’s catching up quickly, not surprisingly given the very rapid spread of Android devices.Apple hit the 15 billion app download mark in July, so Android is still behind, but is expected to catch up around the middle of 2012.If Android keeps up anything like the growth levels seen in 2011, it’ll be leaving Apple in the dust come the end of 2012.