The Android Market now has more than 400,000 apps, according to new research. This has grown since it reached the 300,000 app milestone in August 2011.
App market researcher Distimo reports that the Android Market needed four more months to grow from 300,000 apps to 400,000 compared to the Apple App Store, which took seven months.
This compares to how long it took for both stores to reach the 200,000 milestone. For the Android Market, it took 31 months whereas the Apple App Store took 22 months to reach that landmark. Currently, the Apple App Store has more than 500,000 apps.
Two-thirds of apps on the Android Market are free. This has grown from 60pc in April 2011 to 68pc by the end of the year. Distimo attributes this to the success of the freemium model, where the app is offered for free but users pay for additional features.
The Android Market also almost has more than 100,000 active publishers, with each developer publishing 4.1 apps on average. This compares to each developer publishing five apps on average last year.
Last month, the Android Market reached a landmark of 10bn app downloads. According to Google, the Android Market is now achieving a rate of 1bn downloads per month.
