Unlike Androids dev teams, I won't divide this post into games and Apps, so its all going to be going in together.
Google execs recently touted 100,000 Androids units shipping per day. That's an impressive figure, and especially, since every casual journalist under the sun is clawing to get their hands on the next iPhone , or second best, an exclusive piece of news on it. Mainstream press aside, there is no doubt that the Android platform is gaining traction. In the same way a console lives or dies on the strength of its software, Android's success will only continue if its Apps continue to appeal.
So, hows it going?
Well, in total they currently number over 50000, and I do not plan to get to grips with every one of them individually. Instead I'll talk about the ones I've used regularly myself, and hopefully we can extrapolate this to the rest of the market. At the very least it might give those wondering if the Android device they are thinking of buying can do everything the iPhone can do.
With the number of Android devices increasing at a steady, and impressive, way, we can assume that as popularity of the hardware increases, App developers will also be keen to tap into this emerging market. Its seems like only a few months ago (January?) that there were 30000 apps for the device, so an increase of 20k in six months is impressive to say the least (iPhone currently has 150k in case you were wondering).
So, the apps I use:
BBC news Widget
Engadget Widget
Weather
London Tube Map
DoggCatcher podcast downloader
Youtube
Facebook
AdvanceTaskKiller
Retrocamera & FX Camera
Games - Robot Defense, Bebbled, Jewels, Maths workout, Spacephysics
Qype
Skype
Google Starmap
Finger Painting
Magic 8 Ball
Dice
and a fair few others!
Writing this down in a list makes me actually sit back and realise how many I've been using without thinking about it.
Among them Doggcatcher and Spacephysics are the only paid for apps.
Without giving it any thought at all, I could say, that generally, the apps I have used have been impressive. Read on to get to the nitty gritty. The ones I use the most, have two key attributes: They work and they are relevant/useful to me on a day to day basis. The ones that I use the least usually fail on one of these attributes. For example, the Tube Map app, is really very simple, but it does what you'd expect of it, you can scroll around the map, plan routes, and zoom in and out etc.
Google, unlike Apple, does not approve every release on Android, and as we covered last week a good app makes it mark on the basis of user reviews. What this means is that there is very little in the way of quality control, and this is especially prevalent when searching for more obscure apps. The Retrocamera app for example is very cool, and does a lot of things, but is slow, and hard to take pictures with, therefore I can never really be bothered to use it. It appears, that as a general rule, if an app crashes, is slow, or doesn't do what you wanted, it is discarded very quickly. We must remember that with 50000 apps out there, chances are there will be one that does work. Additionally, since I haven't actually invested anything in them apart from some time and bandwidth, I don't feel like I've lost anything getting rid of them. In short, we can say that when it comes to apps, I am a pretty fickle user, and I believe others must be as well.
In regards to the paid for apps, I suppose, by the same logic we can say that people are more likely to be a little more faithful. However, they are also more likely to expect more from the app. Doggcatcher, had good reviews, and I wanted my podcasts to appear on my phone so I didn't have to keep downloading them and transfering from my PC. I paid $6 for it, and it works well. Despite this, I have stopped using it, because my supposed 'unlimited' data plan, actually caps out at 1GB. Spacephsics I paid for after playing the demo, as its perfect as mobile game, and works great with the touchscreen - and is my number one recommendation for games on Android.
Of the free apps, I have seen BBC news and Facebook go through several updates, which has improved their performance and functionality no end (particularly with BBC, which was previously fairly buggy).
So to make some casual observations about the state of the Android apps market. I think its fair to say that choice is not an issue, and this will be continue to be even less of an issue as time goes on and Android hardware sales increase. Quality is an issue with some apps, but then this is a free platform, and so we must accept that. Paid for apps, in my experience at least, usually offer more functionality than their free counterparts (though this is not always the case, obviously), and are general stable.
Free apps, are a bit hit or miss. Many put out by major developers (Facebook, BBC, Google) are absolutely brilliant. But conversely, while some apps put out by indie devs can be absolutely brilliant (Tubemap, Magic 8 Ball, Dice) others are sometimes buggy or slow (Retrocamera, FX camera).
I'm still waiting for a Wheel of Tea app though...
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