Apple can no longer say that its App Store has the largest number of apps for mobile devices. After announcing a series of new Nexus products, Google said its online store, Google Play, has reached the milestone of 700,000 apps.
This means that Google could match Apple in number of games, productivity tools, and all other types of programs that are typically used in mobile devices. With this, Google is mainly trying to remove from the equation, the number of apps, one of the major selling points of Apple. Apple had announced during the iPhone 5 event on 12 September that it had 700,000 apps.
The growth of apps for Android has been quite strong, since Google announced it had 600,000 apps in June, 675,000 a month ago, and now 700,000 apps. Apple will now have to stop referring to be “the largest ecosystem of apps in the world.”
It should be noted, however, that Apple believes that its operating system generates more sales revenues than any other mobile platforms. In a recent report, Opera confirmed Apple’s iOS platform generates almost half of the revenue as compared to rest of the mobile platforms.
Microsoft recently announced it had reached 120,000 applications, demonstrating that it has a long way to go to get to the numbers achieved by iOS and Android.
Google has been gradually gaining market share, thanks to the success of variety Android smartphones, plus the Nexus series compared to the one phone by Apple, its iPhone. Another reason for Google’s boom is that it provides much less stringent submission guidelines in comparison to Apple, which makes Google Play open to submissions from virtually all sources.