Google’s store is just 25,000 applications away, putting it within striking distance of overtaking Apple’s App Store.

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(Credit: Google)

 

Apple’s App Store has always offered the most apps to users. But that could change.

Google announced yesterday that its Google Play store now offers 675,000 applications. Apple announced earlier this month that its store had 700,000 applications available.

Both Google’s app marketplace and the App Store launched in 2008. However, as Inside Mobile Apps pointed out yesterday in its deep dive into the growth of both marketplaces, Apple’s option has historically been the leader by a wide margin. In 2010, for example, Apple announced that it had reached 250,000 downloaded apps. Google’s store, then known as the Android Market, didn’t hit that tally until July 2011.

However, it appears developers are responding more kindly to Google Play. Apple’s App Store reached 650,000 applications in July. Considering Google Play has 675,000 apps now, it appears that the store is less than two months behind Apple’s marketplace.

That rapid catch-up might surprise some who remember a study released earlier this year by IDC and Appcelerator, a company that makes cross-platform programming tools for developers. In that study, the companies found that the number of developers who were “very interested” in programming for Android smartphones dropped from 83.3 percent to 78.6 percent. A similar step down occurred for Android tablets. Apple’s iPhone and iPad stayed atop the list with 89 percent and 88 percent interest, respectively.

Source: CNET News