The Google Play Store officially ranks top for the biggest selection of mobile apps, adding a third year to its winning streak.
Google’s mobile software platform now boasts just shy of 1.43 million apps, courtesy of 388,000 different developers, as revealed by AppFigures.
This puts it a significant way ahead of Apple’s App Store, which touts a more meagre 1.21 million apps built by 282,000 different devs.
Windows, meanwhile, was recently revealed to have just 560,000 apps, making up a little over a third of the Play Store’s new total.
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What’s good news for everyone, however, is that the global app market grew pretty significantly throughout 2014.
Once again Google saw the biggest boost with its Play Store seeing upwards of a 200 per cent growth last year.
The second fastest, meanwhile, was actually Amazon – that’s not surprising, considering it only has around 300,000 apps to its name.
Apple’s growth was next up, seeing a 155 per cent rise since the beginning of the 2014.
The report also shed light on the fastest growing app categories for both iOS and Android.
For iOS, business-focused apps came out on top, followed by food and drink, then lifestyle, then social networking, and finally catalogues.
Google, meanwhile, saw games as its quickest growing category, with photography coming in second, music third, business fourth, and entertainment fifth.
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So what gives? Why is Google racing ahead of Apple for apps? Well, it’s largely because Apple has a much more rigorous app review process, whereas Google’s devs can just publish direct to the Play Store.
It’s also worth mentioning that iOS users have typically been known to spend more on (and in) apps, so it’s not all grim for Cupertino HQ.
