Android Device Dashboard

A Google spokesperson confirmed for eWEEK that there are 16,000 Android free and paid apps, not 20,000 as others previously reported. (iTunes App store is around 120k now with over 130k apps having been “seen”).

A few more data points re. Android:

• There are 5 Android instantiations of varying distribution through the first two weeks of December: 1.1, 1.5, 1.6, 2.0 and the fresh 2.0.1. It seems Google is prepared to see that number go much higher. You can see the distribution of platform versions in a pie chart here:

http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform-versions.html

• If a developer chooses only the most popular platform version, he gets to target about 54% of the installed base.
• Motorola’s Droid ships with only 256 MB available for app storage. Google Android does not support installation of apps to SD cards, so developers face a very real limit. Many of the most popular iPhone apps (games) easily exceed 100 MB, so not very many quality apps would fit on Droid (and some won’t fit at all: Magellan RoadMate app ($59.99) alone weighs in at 1.36GB). That’s why Droid only offers users three measly panels for displaying apps; users probably won’t even be able to fill up two before they run out of storage space.

Droid comes with a built-in turn-by-turn app Google’s Maps Navigation likely because no other nav app would come close to fitting into the Droid’s limited 256MB app storage space.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-Android-Device-Dashboard-Highlights-Fragmentation-804428/?kc=EWKNLITA12222009STR4