Distmo Report Finds Less Variety In Top Apps For Android vs. iOS

by Toni McQuilken May 27, 2011 3:11 PM – Leave your thoughts

Distmo released it’s latest report on the state of the Android Market, with some interesting results. Please note these results are for the Google Android Market only, and don’t include stats from places like the Amazon App Store. Where in the prior report, Distmo looked at the growth of the number of available applications in the Market, in this one, it looked at the download volumes. To view the report in its entirety, visit the link above to download a PDF.

The major findings in this new report include:

96 applications have been downloaded more than 5 million times. Google Maps is the only application with more than 50 million downloads, making it the all-time most popular application in the store.
20% of all free applications, and 80% of all paid applications, have been downloaded less than 100 times worldwide to date.
It is more challenging for developers in the Google Android Market than in the Apple App Store to monetize using a one-off fee model. Only two paid applications have been downloaded more than half a million times in the Google Android Market worldwide to date, while six paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone generate the same number of downloads within a two month timeframe in the United States alone.
Looking at just games, there are five paid games in the Market with over 250,000 downloads worldwide. In the Apple App Store for iPhone ten paid games generated more than 250,000 downloads in the United States alone in two months.
The refresh rate of top application charts is significantly higher in the Apple App Store for iPhone than in the Google Android Market. During the month of April, there were 94 distinct applications with a top 10 (free or paid) position in the Apple App Store in the US; there were only 26 distinct applications that reached a top 10 position in the Google Android Market.