If you just got an Android device for Christmas and want to start loading up the apps, there's quite a lot to choose from.
According to a new report from Distimo, there are now more than 400,000 apps in the Android Market, among both free and paid content.
Back in October, it was reported that 500,000 Android apps had been published, but a significant amount of those were not active anymore, which highlights one of the biggest distinctions between iOS and Android.
If I want to publish an app to the Android Market today, I can. If I want the exact same app on the App Store, I have to submit it for review and wait for someone at Apple to click the "Approve" button.
As a result, as anyone would easily expect, a lot of Android apps are removed after they're published. In fact, research group Research2Guidance says 37% of the apps on Android Market have been removed. That's compared to 24% for Apple's App Store.
Nevertheless, there are now 400,000 valid, working apps in the Android Market. Obviously, the iPhone has a head start on Android, so it's not surprising that it has more apps. But there is still very much a sense that if you want to be a successful app developer, you should go to iOS. Android is somewhat of an afterthought for some devs.
As a result, the hundreds of thousands of apps that exist on the Android Market are largely less professional or ambitious than those on the App Store.
In this day and age, apps are everything, so even though Android can boast a pretty impressive quantity, it needs to focus more on its quality.
