Strategy Analytics: Android Market to eclipse App Store in eighteen months

CBROnline relays a new Strategy Analytics report that spells another victory for Google as its mobile bazaar is projected to become bigger than Apple’s App Store in terms of items available before the end of the next year:

According to Strategy Analytics’ new application storefront forecast the Android Market is poised to overtake the Apple App Store in quarterly volume by the end of 2012.

This shouldn’t be a problem considering that Google’s Android Market is getting additional assistance from third-party app stores such as the Amazon Appstore for Android, GetJar, Nook and others. Apple as of July 7 reported 425,000 apps on the App Store that have been downloaded 15 billion times on 200 million iOS devices, generating $3.6 billion in revenues. A week later Google said Android Market saw six billion downloads across the 130 million Android devices sold to date and more than 500,000 device activations per each day.

Paid downloads on mobile app stores should drive nearly $2 billion per quarter by the end of next year, the research firm said. “Applications are a multi-billion dollar industry on their own and are playing an increasingly important role in the phone purchase process, and play a key role in augmenting platform stickiness, after the operating decision has been made”, says the report.

It’s the latest in a series of pro-Google surveys from Strategy Analytics, which last week projected Android had taken one-third of the tablet market in June based on shipments of 4.6 million Android-powered tablets versus 9.25 million iPads Apple shipped in the three-month period ended June 25. Strategy Analytics also reported that in the first quarter Samsung’s Galaxy S beat the iPhone as the top-selling smartphone in Japan and predicted Samsung might emerge as the world’s leading smartphone vendor when they report quarterly earnings this Friday. With 20.34 million iPhones shipped in the June quarter, a 142 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter for Apple, versus 16.7 million Nokia smartphones, a 34 percent decline, Apple has knocked Nokia off the top and become the #1 smartphone maker in the world as of this month.