Android Market continues catch-up: 9000+ New Apps in March

While obviously the Android Market is far, far behind the App Store, it has a decent number of apps (decent being an understatement, particularly when compared with webOS). After all, how many iPhone apps are truly useful? In fact, according to AndroLib, the Android Market tracker, over 9,000 new apps were submitted to the market in March alone.

Additionally, in April thus far, according to AndroLib, there have been 1,610 new apps. Since July of 2009, the monthly totals have been:

• 1,558 July 2009
• 1,179 August 2009
• 2,199 September 2009
• 2,494 October 2009
• 3,315 November 2009
• 3,807 December 2009
• 4,458 January 2010
• 5,532 February 2010
• 9,329 March 2010
• 1,610 April 2010 (so far)

That jump from February to March 2010 looks very nice, but the developers better get moving as April seems like it might buck the trend and show a lesser number of new apps in the Android Market.

One has to wonder if the reason for the slight downward trend when extrapolating the April data thus far is the iPad. BI posits an interesting theory: it's possible that the iPad will negatively impact Android app development because iPhone OS developers will develop for that device, knowing an app probably needs minimal modifications to run efficiently, as opposed to a rewrite for Android.

Interesting theory, and undoubtedly more of an issue for smaller developers, but while many companies probably want to be platform-agnostic, many have to choose their battles with limited resources. Time will tell, and the iPad isn't the last tablet we'll see this year, either.