Google Play Store has for first time ever leapfrogged Apple’s App Store in terms of number of apps available.
According to a report on appFigures, an analytics service that monitors data from the thousands of apps that use its platform, Google Play ended 2014 with 1.43 million apps, compared to App Store’s 1.21 million apps.
The analytics firm monitored Google Play, the iOS App Store and Amazon’s app store and found that all three had major growth but Google Play’s was the most significant.
“What’s interesting is that although Apple continues to grow strongly, it’s really Google Play that’s growing,” the company wrote. “In 2014, the number of apps distributed through Google Play has doubled.”
As per the report, in 2014 alone, Google’s store added about 388,000 new developers, even more than Apple and Amazon combined. While Apple reached 282,000 developers, Amazon debuted 48,000 developers.
Games, photography, music, business and entertainment were among the fastest growing Google Play categories that grew the most in 2014. In comparison, the iOS app store experienced the biggest growth in the business category, followed by the lifestyle and games categories.
Explaining the reason behind Google Play Store growth, Ariel Michaeli, co-founder of appFigures.com, said in an interview that “Apple’s strict [app] review process is paying off for Google.”
“Apple rejects a lot of apps … and it is either becoming too difficult for developers [to create iOS apps] or Google is just becoming more lucrative…. It is [easier] to submit apps to the Play store [compared to] how strict Apple is, often to the point of frustrating their developers with the vague rules that give Apple the ability to reject or pull apps without notice.”
