Study: Google to take Apple's app crown by July

(Credit: Distimo)

Apple frequently touts the number of applications available to iOS users, which now sits north of 350,000. But that number could be in danger of coming in second place to rival Google in just a few months time.

In a new report by market research firm Distimo for the last month of activity on Apple's various App Stores, the BlackBerry App World, GetJar, Google's Android Market, Nokia's Ovi Store, Palm's App Catalog, and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, the group found Google and Microsoft's efforts to be growing the fastest.

"If all application stores maintain their current growth pace, approximately five months from now Google Android Market will be the largest store in terms of number of applications followed by the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, BlackBerry App World and Nokia Ovi Store," the firm said in its findings. "The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace will also be larger than the Nokia Ovi Store and BlackBerry App World prior to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace being available for even a full year."

Distimo's research found that Google has already made headway on attacking Apple on the volume front, pushing past the App Store with 134,342 free applications versus the App Store for iPhone and iPod Touch's 121,845 free applications. The firm estimates that Google will be 40,000 applications short of evening out with Apple's overall volume by the end of June, and will catch up completely in July.

Distimo notes that any growth estimates are gauged on the past three months of activity across the ecosystem, which "could easily accelerate or slow down."

Not included in that calculation are sales and app volume counted from Amazon's recently launched Appstore, which is not to be confused with Apple's "App Store" (as on-going litigation points out). Amazon launched its currently Android-only mobile application store near the end of last month, which would make it too late to included in this round of tracking. Amazon's store contains many of the same apps available on the Android Market, though could end up building up a library of exclusives over time.

Along with the volume tracking, Distimo's report released a year's findings about Apple's App Store for the iPad, which it says reached 75,755 applications at the end of March. Thirty percent of those applications are free, the firm said, with the average price for paid apps hitting $5.36.

Interestingly enough, that $5.36 number is up from the early days of the store, when the average was $4.34 per paid application. Distimo says the trend is unusual, since other application stores tend to have a lowering average price as app volumes get higher. "This is likely because the games category (which has generally had a high in-app purchase adoption rate) has lost some of its prominence to other categories," the report said.

Based on Distimo's data, books reign as the supreme category on the iPad as of the end of March, with 16,712 book applications. Games come a close second at 13,861 applications. From there it drops off to education, followed by entertainment and lifestyle applications. Worth a mention here is a separate study from forecast firm Simba released earlier today, which found that nearly 40 percent of iPad owners haven't used the device for reading e-books. Most said they used their computer as a primary reading device.

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20058080-248.html#ixzz1KnS64Ycg

Chrome OS Bound for Tablets -- Why?

Well, it looks like I've lost a bet, thanks to Google. A friend and I were arguing about Chrome OS a month or two ago. He was sure Google was going to bring it to tablets. I said no way; Android was for tablets, Chrome OS for netbooks and light laptops. Yes, I knew Google had mentioned Chrome OS on tablets a while back, but that was before Honeycomb.

It turns out I was wrong. Yesterday CNET's Stephen Shankland published an article documenting tablet indicators in the latest version of Chrome OS and the evidence is pretty compelling (an on-screen keyboard and a user-agent of "CrOS Touch" are both dead giveaways).

Google's official response to Shankland's discoveries?

"We are engaging in early open-source work for the tablet form factor, but we have nothing new to announce at this time...Chrome OS was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of form factors. We expect to see different partners build different kinds of devices based on Chrome OS, but for this initial release we are targeting the notebook form factor."

The first commercial Chrome OS netbooks are due out this summer (I'm calling them netbooks not due to size but due to the cloud-based OS) but once those hit the market Google's statement allows for pretty much anything to happen.

I was lucky enough to get a CR-48 netbook last December. I wanted to love it, and I made a valiant effort to use it as my secondary laptop for a week or two, but it just didn't work out for me. I don't think Chrome OS is very good. Not for netbooks and, in its current form at least, not for tablets, either.

What I find most interesting about Android Honeycomb is that it allows for segmenting screen real estate (at least that's the sense I get; I don't own a Honeycomb device). Along the same lines, one of my biggest peeves about iOS on an iPad is that everything takes up the whole screen. If I want to chat with someone via IM I need to devote all my screen real-estate to doing that, at least while I'm focused on the chat. Chrome OS has the same problem in most cases. Everything is a web page, and since the OS is the browser, you can't reduce the size of the window. In other words, a web-based IM client has to occupy a full-screen tab.

I found that limiting in Chrome OS on a netbook and I find similar behavior limiting on a tablet. I need an OS that lets me see a web page and an IM client and a music player client and a twitter client...all at the same time. Chrome OS can't do that, iOS can't do it, but Honeycomb gets at least partially there.

So I see Chrome OS as a step backwards from Android Honeycomb at this point. Of course Google could overhaul the system and port Honeycomb's "Fragment" system to Chrome OS. Maybe that's part of the vague rumor we've heard about Android and Chrome OS eventually merging into a single OS.

Setting aside my person quibbles, though, I have to wonder how wise Chrome OS tablets are from a marketing point of view. Won't this cause even more customer confusion? When Joe Consumer decides to buy a tablet this summer, he'll be able to go into an Apple store and essentially pick Small, Medium or Large and walk out with an iPad. Buying an iPad is dead simple.

Alternatively, he can go to a Best Buy and look at tablets and have to decide if he wants a 7", 9" or a 10" tablet, then pick Android or WebOS or Blackberry OS (or, perhaps, Windows). If he picks Android he'll next have to choose from one of several manufacturers, trying to make sense of different CPUs and other factors. There're a lot of factors to consider! Now Google is going to add yet another tablet OS to throw into the mix. Maybe one more won't make things any more confusing; maybe the "non-Apple" tablet market is already too fractured to be saved. Maybe Google just doesn't care. After all, they generally aren't the ones selling hardware.

So what's the upside of Chrome OS? Honestly I had to engage my buddy in a loud debate before I could find one. Finally I realized the one benefit of a Chrome OS tablet: storage. You won't need a 16 GB Chrome OS tablet: everything is stored in the cloud. That means a Chrome OS tablet could be a lower cost option than a tablet running Honeycomb (where you'll want lots of storage for your apps and local media).

Cost aside, I just don't see a real benefit to a Chrome OS tablet. Almost by definition, a Honeycomb tablet is going to be able to do anything a Chrome OS tablet does (via its built-in browser), plus run native apps. That cost different had better be significant. How about that $99 tablet we've all been dreaming of? If Chrome OS can get us there, I'll stop being grumpy about it.

Am I missing anything, readers? Are there other benefits to porting Chrome OS to a tablet form-factor that I'm not seeing? Please share your ideas because I can't help but think I'm missing something obvious.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/article/224799/chrome_os_bound_for_tablets_why.html

I've tried Chrome OS and my thoughts on it are somewhat neutral. I like the concept and everything, but it's just not an everyday OS. It's just the kind of thing where you just use it to show off. But Chrome OS on a tablet, that sounds appealing.