ANDROID - 10 BILLION AND COUNTING

Regardless of what the number may account, it’s still quite impressive as all those zeroes lined up after that lonely one sure means someone is cashing in big. The smartphone war has been raging on for years now with Apple and Google’s Android angling for the top spot as the most sold and used smartphone out there. And while Apple may have its devotees, willing to line up outside of Apple stores for days just to get their hands on the new iPhone, it’s Android users who are actually the ones that count. Thanks to Android, Samsung smartphones overtook Apple’s shipping a record 27.8 million units in the last quarter, accounting for 23.8 per cent of the global smartphone market.

And as if that wasn’t impressive, Android has now just recorded a whopping 10 billion app downloads. Google announced this milestone via its blog, adding that its apps, via the Android Market, were being downloaded at a rate of a billion a month. The search giant even announced that to celebrate this record making number, it would give discounts on its most downloaded apps starting with Asphalt 6 HD, Minecraft, Endomondo Sports Tracker Pro and Swiftkey X for the next 10 days.

Figures recently released by Google showed that app downloads had considerably increased in a short span of time. Google’s first billion came after a lengthy 22 months but after that the increase was quite brisk, jumping 8 billion in around a year and a half, with 1 billion apps sold between November and December of this year.

In comparison, Apple reached the 1 billion count in nine months and so far holds onto 15 billion downloads in total, however experts feel they may not hold this position for long.

Analyst Geoff Blaber from CCS Insight explained, “Apple announced the 15 billion download mark in July so it's clear that Android's momentum in device activations is translating to application downloads and usage. We'd expect Android to overtake Apple in application downloads in the first half of 2012.”

But while Android might be galloping ahead, some industry analysts have said that while Google can celebrate, it may be a bit of a hollow victory. Their caveat seems to appear in the form of the actual quality of the Android’s apps, saying that many of them have technical glitches that need to be addressed. Carolina Milanesi from the analyst firm, Gartner, offered,

“The number game matters to industry watchers and helps advertising but it is not changing the bottom line," adding, "Quality of the apps and the store in general and duration in particular should be the focus for Google. This is where I still see a difference between the Apple App Store and Android Market.”