Until late last year Apple was always ahead in the amount of apps available in it’s store, largely due to the fact that iOS apps came first. That all changed in October when Andriod appnumbers caught up, and according to Pure Oxygen Mobile they’ve now over taken Apple apps.

It could be because developing Android apps is getting easier…

The nature of Android means that unlike iOS it’s available on hundreds of different handsets, all of which are slightly different, be it from a hardware or software prospective. So developing apps for Android devices has always meant significant amounts of testing. What works on a high-end phone may not work on a low-end phone, but to ensure the majority of the market is catered for such issues need to be ironed out, cue a lovely lengthy testing process. Not only is this a pain, but it’s costly too, making them a less desirable option for businesses.

However, standardisation of Android devices is making the process much simpler for developers, and is likely a cause for the rocketing number of apps in the last six months. Samsung’s growing stake in market means the base hardware for many devices is now the same. As well as creating their own brand smartphones, last year Samsung also became the leading manufacturer of components for other android-based brands too. So regardless of the smart phone you now buy, there is a large chance it will be running the same base hardware as many others.

The evolution of Android’s platform over the years has also made software side of things much more straight forward for developers, with fewer variants of the latest operating system Jelly Bean than Gingerbread. Together with the hardware standardisation this is easing the amount of testing developers are needing to do, speeding up the process and making Android app development much simpler in general.