Android Market: 70,000 Apps, 1 Billion Downloads

According to data collected by AndroLib, Android users have downloaded more than one billion applications. That's an impressive number, though it is an estimate and hasn't been confirmed by Google.

What's not clear is whether that is one billion unique applications that have been downloaded, or if that includes application updates. For example, I've updated many of my Android apps more than 10 times in the last year or so. Did those count as one or 10 downloads? AndroLib doesn't say.

One billion downloads is still a lot of activity. According to AndroLib's charts, the rate of downloads is increasing rapidly. It has a real-time view of the number of downloads, and that number has climbed by more than 100,000 downloads in the time it took me to write this post.

Update: During Google's quarterly earnings call, it said that the Android Market has 70,000 apps, which is less than AndroLib's estimate of 100,000.

AndroLib also notes that the Android Market added 14,000+ new apps in May, 15,000+ apps in June, and more than 10,000 this month (already!). On July 6 alone, more than 1,500 apps and games were published. Those numbers push the total applications in the Android Market to 70,000. The Android Market passed the 50,000 app mark in late April / early May.

How much are people spending on all those applications? Not much. Right now, about 61.4% of the apps in the Android Market are free. Roughly 38.6% of the apps charge a fee. Free apps are more popular to download than the for-pay apps (for obvious reasons).

During Thursday's earnings call, Google said that it is activating 160,000 new Android handsets per day. That number has climbed rapidly during the course of the last six months, as dozens of new Android handsets have been announced and landed in the market. With such widespread adoption taking off, it's no wonder that the number of downloads has reached one billion.

Adding the the frenzy will be excited new owners of the Motorola Droid X and the Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant. Both of these Android handsets went on sale today at Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile, respectively.

Carry on, Android developers and Android users.