Android Market to outgrow App Store in July?

Latest analysis about app store developments may surprise you – turns out the Android Market is on its way to becoming the biggest application repository eclipsing the App Store as soon as this July, according to researchers from Distimo.

An April update of the researcher's app report shows that the number of applications grew by a healthy 16% in the Market in comparison to the pale 6% growth of apps in the App Store for March. Distimo doesn't give further explanations, but assuming this turns into a trend, it will take five months for the Google's web store to take over Apple's rival.

We however would take this with a grain of salt as just recently a study showed developer sentiment leaned toward iOS as more programmers intended to launch applications on Apple's platform, while Android was a runner-up. Slower or faster, the gap between the two is closing. Actually, the Market already has more free apps: 134,342 against the 121,845 for iOS.

Other highlights of Distimo's findings were:

- The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace will also be larger than the Nokia Ovi Store and BlackBerry App World prior to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace being available for even a full year.

- One year after launching the iPad, Apple will be confronted with its first serious competition as both BlackBerry and Google enter the emerging tablet market.

- Apple has already seized momentum and grown the App Store for iPad in the first year to 75,755 applications developed by 21,975 publishers.

- Daily revenue in the Top 100 paid [for iPad] is approximately $400,000 excluding in-app purchases.

- Many of the top publishers on the iPad already publish cross-platform. Fifty-eight percent of the 50 most popular publishers have already developed applications for non-Apple platforms.