Google’s Apps And Developers Outgrew Apple’s In 2014

A new report from analytics vendor appFigures says Google Play’s app market has outrun Apple’s App Store in 2014 for the first time in the number of new apps, according to TechCrunch.

Google Play’s developer community also grew faster than Apple’s for the third straight year, and that growth accelerated over the course 2014. Google now distributes apps from 388,000 different developers, topping Apple’s total of 282,000 and Amazon’s 48,000, appFigures said.

Google Play also hosts more total apps than Apple, with 1.43 million in its catalog, compared with 1.21 million for Apple, and distant-third Amazon with 293,000. Still, it was a good year for all three app markets. Each grew by more than 50 percent, and Amazon’s grew by 90 percent.

While those raw numbers look great for Google Play, it’s important to remember that the two markets aren’t managed in the same way. Apple puts apps through a more extensive review before they can go live, while Google lets developers publish directly, only stepping in when there are Terms of Service violations or mobile malware distributions.

The iOS app world is also more established, and the top five growth categories for iOS apps in 2014 reflect that: Business, Food & Drink, Lifestyle, Social Networking and Catalogs. (Among new iOS developers, the hottest categories were Business, Lifestyle, then Games.) Meanwhile, on Google Play the top growth categories were Games, Photography, Music, Business and Entertainment (among new developers the top three were Games, Business and Entertainment).

Last week, rival analytics company Flurry unveiled a similar analysis that concluded 2014’s top app growth categories were Shopping, Utilities & Productivity, and Messaging. But the two analytics companies used different category groupings and different approaches, so they’re not directly comparable.

It’s also not clear that Google’s victory in developer growth translates into developer preference. Many app developers still launch on iOS first — where developers are generating most of their revenue — then following up with Android versions. However, Google’s app growth suggests that iOS developers increasingly are crossing that line, especially as the international market opens up.