Android Market Growing Fast; More Android Phones to Come in 2010

Just a little more than a year after its debut in October 2008, the Android Market has already hit the 20,000-application mark, according to the statistics released by AndroLib. Among the available apps, the majority (62.3 percent) of them is free for downloads and 37.7 percent of them are paid.

Apparently there is still a long way to go before Android’s application store can catch up with its main rival, Apple App Store, who is now offering more than 100,000 applications for users to download. However, the expansion rate of the former is hard to overlook either: While there were only around 10,000 applications available back in early September, the number of apps has doubled by now.

Driving the growth is the increasing number and popularity of new Android powered handsets, including the popular Motorola DROID from Verizon, the HTC Hero from Sprint and the HTC Droid Eris from Verizon. About 10 Google phones were released this year.

For the coming year, there is a great chance that we will see more than 50 new Android devices, as many vendors have made their commitments, according to CCS Insight’s analyst Ben Wood. For example, Acer and HTC are looking to release 5 to 6 respectively in the first half of 2010, while Motorola is expected to introduce 10 new Android based handsets next year to reproduce the success of the DROID. Also, Google is rumored to release a phone of its own brand soon.

In the meantime, research company IMC (Market Intelligence & Consulting Institute) estimates that global shipments of Android smartphones will amount to 6.5 million units by the end of 2009, and jump to 31.8 million units in 2013. The strong growth assures plenty of demand for developers to meet by designing new and better applications.

With an expected influx of Android-powered devices into the mobile industry next year, it is foreseeable that the Android application store will continue to grow by leaps and bounds, and become a threat to the App Store some time or other.

Tags: Motorola DROID (A855) Accessories, HTC Hero Accessories (GSM), HTC Droid Eris Accessories, iPhone Accessories, Motorola Accessories, HTC Accessories