Android Market to surpass Apple App Store by August 2011

A new report from Distimo shows that the Android Market is expected to offer more applications for download/and or purchase than Apple's App store before by the end of 2011. The growth of the App store has decreased lately, while the market's growth rate has been accelerating. Another report from Germany's research2guidance, backs up Distimo’s findings. They forecast that the Android Market will exceed the App Store by August 2011.

This will happen if growth rates continue as expected, with Android reaching 425,000 apps next August, effectively overtaking App Store in size. The report shows that 28,000 new apps were added to the Android Market in April 2011, while only 11,000 new apps went live via Apple.

The majority of applications available on both platforms don't see much traction. There are between 100,000 to 200,000 apps that may rarely or never get downloaded by anyone (on both platforms). The high growth rate of the Android Market does not necessarily mean that the average mobile app developer will make money. In fact, research2guidance, says that the opposite may be true:

On the contrary, the success of an app store is negatively correlated to the success of an average developer. All analysis on the early months of an app store including the Android Market shows that average download numbers decrease dramatically after the first months or even weeks after the launch of the store. The long tail gets longer and longer while the top 5% gets richer and richer.

What makes this news to me is that for the longest time the Android Market seemed to be inching along at what seemed to be a snails pace. It has annoyed me that so many companies design mobile apps for use on iOS. As an Android user I am happy to see the tides are turning. There are some amazing Android products coming out soon.

What are your thoughts on this news?