INTERNET SEARCH GIANT Google's Play store for Android apps will topple Apple's App Store as the most popular app platform within the next few months, according to an analyst.
Apple recently announced that its 50 billionth iOS app had been downloaded, a pretty impressive milestone. However, Google is slowly closing the gap, having announced just one day earlier that it had seen 48 billion Android apps downloaded. In fact, apps are being downloaded from the Google Play store at the rate of 2.5 billion per month, according to reports, against Apple's 2.0 billion downloaded from iTunes.
Given these statistics and the growing popularity of Android, which has 56.9 percent of the UK market compared to Apple's 28.7 percent, an analyst has noted that Google is on track to overtake Apple in the next few months.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Horace Dediu of Asymco said, "The [download] rate for [Google] Play is higher so I would imagine it will have a higher total in a few months if not sooner."
"The sheer weight of Android units will generate more downloads but on a per device basis the iOS devices do seem to consume more apps and the gap is not narrowing," he added.
Not only is Android set to be crowned the most popular mobile operating system for apps, Google is also starting to make more money from Android apps. Analytics firm Distimo said that Google Play's share of daily revenues has increased "significantly" in the past six months, from 19 percent in November to 27 percent in April.
Unless Apple pulls out something extra special at WWDC next week, it looks like the shiny gadget maker's iTunes apps download record could fall soon. µ
