Just to put that number into perspective a little bit, it took Apple's App Store nine months of existence to hit its one-billionth app download. The Android Market has been around a little longer than that--debuting in October 2008, the store ended up hitting the one-billionth app download some 21 months after its launch.
That is, of course, if AndroLib's numbers are to be believed. The site currently has the Android Market populated with roughly 100,000 applications. That's a bit beyond Google's estimate, and it's unclear just exactly how AndroLib is pulling its information into its neatly constructed charts.
TechCrunch's Robin Wauters got a hold of the site to inquire about their estimates, but even the official explanation doesn't shed much light on the situation.
“AndroLib says they measure Android apps published throughout the world, and that Google probably kept a nice round number for their earnings call--and they also think they may sometimes count apps that have been recently removed from the Market," Wauters writes. “AndroLib also claims the number of available apps sometimes grows by 1000+ per day."
For what it's worth, Androlib lead developer Nicolas Sorel has confirmed that the site's algorithms for calculating app downloads function in real-time, in that the constantly churning number now displayed on Androlib's new site design is an extrapolation--albeit a close one--of the Android Market's fluctuating conditions.
He points to his own application as an example: while the official download number for his own app rests at roughly 3.3 million on the official count, Androlib's calculations put his app's downloads at around 3.27 million.
Extrapolations are just part-and-parcel in the Android world. In fact, just this week, Fortune's Seth Weintraub wrote about how Android-based devices are actually outselling the iPhone 4 if one crunches the numbers a little bit. Here's his logic.
According to various Google announcements, the company is activating 160,000 Android-based products per day. Backtrack that number to the iPhone 4's launch day, June 24, and you get a bit over 3.5 million devices sold.
Now, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced at yesterday's “Antennagate" press conference that Apple had sold 3 million iPhone 4s since the product's launch. Does that make Google's Android platform the big winner?
Sort-of.
“To be fair: we don't know how many previous-generation iPhone 3GS models (which are still being sold) Apple is currently selling, so the total number of iPhones sold per day is unclear," writes Weintraub. “Apple also currently only sells the iPhone 4 in its largest seven national markets. It will launch iPhone 4 in smaller markets over the next few months."
And what about market share? Well, according to ComScore's latest May numbers, RIM is still in the lead with 41.7 percent of the U.S. smartphone market. Apple trails by nearly half at 24.4 percent, with Google-based phones nearly half that at 13 percent.
