Google Play Hits 15 Billion App Downloads

Sites include Google.com . Published on May 26th, 2012. Written by Anthony West.

In the apps market, the strength of your offering is measured in downloads, and these days those competing for app and mobile OS dominance take every opportunity to announce a milestone.

The latest player in the market to flaunt its download credentials is Google, who with its app store Google Play has surpassed the 15 billion downloads mark for the first time. News of the milestone was broken by a British newspaper but many suspect that this was Google’s way of letting the news get out there.

Still, 15 billion downloads is quite an achievement, not least because it’s been done at a pace many did not expect. It was only January of this year that Google announced to the world that it had passed 11 billion downloads. Adding another 4 billion downloads in little over 3 months is growth at an astounding rate. Android’s main app competitor is Apple who announced in March that it had reached 25 billion downloads—nearly doubling its previous announcement of 15 billion downloads in July 2011.

The race is clearly on, and with Google Android seeing nearly 600,000 activations daily, it is really a matter of time before Google Play surpasses Apple’s app store with the most downloads. Apple may just hold Google off though, because according to many estimates, developers earn more from Apple than they do from Google.

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