CEO of Google Inc. Larry Page announced that the Google Play store, the equivalent of Apple's App Store, has seen users download more than 50 billion apps. The announcement was made Thursday during the second quarter earnings call.
Apple recently hit the same milestone of 50 billion unique downloads from its App Store. However, what Apple took five years to accomplish has only taken Google four. It was only in May that Google announced at its I/O developers conference that people had downloaded 48 billion apps on the marketplace designed for Android users. Meanwhile Apple announced its 50 billion milestone. While everyone took it as a win for Apple, the speed with which it achieved this goal compared to Google was glacial.
According to Mashable, Page also noted during the call that more money has been paid to app developers in the first half of this year than in all of last year, this would roughly mark the growth of the Android app market's dominance in the app world.
This, of course comes off of the news that in the first half of 2013 Google pulled in $14 billion, not to mention the fact that 1.4 million Android devices are currently being activated each day.
Although Apple is by no means losing money with Google and Android's success, the fact of the matter is it can only entice fans with vague promises and leaked rumors about far off innovations down the line for so long. After a while the small wins like Google getting to 50 billion app downloads quicker, are going to start pulling customers away from Apple as constant innovation leads to instant gratification. In other words, Android users are happier, iPhone users are promised they'll be happier.
Tell us what you think. Are you loyal to your iPhone and don't mind waiting for the innovations or do you prefer to be at the cutting edge at all times, eager to see an apps success or failure?
