Android to overtake iPhone app downloads for first time

An analyst house is predicting that 2011 will see Android overtake iOS devices in app downloads for the first time.

Ovum has estimated that downloads from Android devices will hit 8.1 billion by the end of 2011, while iOS apps will languish at 6 billion downloads.

But it's not all devastating defeat for Apple – its iOS app downloads will have grown by almost three times compared to 2010 when it shifted only 2.7 billion downloads.

But the explosion of growth is all the greater for Android, which saw only 1.4 billion downloads in 2010.

Big figs

The total app downloads is predicted to come in at 18 billion by New Years' Eve – that's a massive leap from 2010's total app downloads which came in at a relatively paltry 7.4 billion.

It's middling news for Microsoft's Windows Phone platform; Ovum predicts that the Windows Phone OS will overtake BlackBerry to take third place in both the number of app downloads and app revenues - but only by 2015.

Ovum's predictions tally with those of another analyst, Strategy Analytics, which predicts that the Android Market is set to surpass the Apple App Store by 2012.

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