Android Market Hits the 100,000 App Mark

Announced today via the AndroidDev twitter account, the Android Market has reached 100,000 applications.  But is this really as big of a milestone as the Android pundits are making it out to be?

Let’s do a little bit of comparison with Android’s biggest (only?) competitor - Apple. When the Motorola Droid was released to Verizon approximately one year ago today, there were around 20,000 apps available in the Android Market. So that means that there have been 80,000 new apps in the past year, a increase of 500%. Not too shabby, right?

However, last year when Android sported its 20,000 apps, Apple had approximately 85,000 apps available. At the Apple Special Event on October 20, 2010, Apple announced that it has over 300,000 apps available for download. That is an increase of 215,000 apps in a year, or a 350% increase. If you compare the time it took Apple to go from 20,000 apps to 100,000, they did it in just 9 months (February 2009 to November 2009).

Now to be fair to Android, this only accounts for the applications available from the Android Market. One of the useful (although potentially dangerous) features with Android devices is the ability to install applications from any source. For instance, the Angry Birds application recently released from Android devices was available via a third party distribution site several hours before it made it into the Android Market. But while the Android Market is not the only distribution method for apps, it is still the most widely known and used, so it likely is fairly representative of the size of the android application base.

So calm down Android. At this point in the game, Apple is still beating you hands down in the application department,. The 100,000 app mark isn’t really as big of a deal as some seem to think it is.