Android Users Favoring Apps Over Games

By Stephen Lawson
Fri, October 24, 2008

IDG News Service —

Owners of the Android-powered G1 handset seem more anxious to get things done with it than to play games, according to download statistics from the long-awaited phone's first few days on sale.

The device -- the first to use the Google-backed operating system -- went on sale from T-Mobile USA on Wednesday morning after a preview sale at one store on Tuesday night. The Android Market, an online store for applications and games, launched at the same time. More Android phones are yet to come, and the open-source operating system and associated applications have been anticipated as possibly the next phenomenon to shake up the mobile industry following Apple's iPhone and App Store.

By late Friday, games were taking a back seat to applications in the Android Market, based on broad ranges of download numbers displayed on the store. It showed that 20 applications had been downloaded between 10,000 and 50,000 times, compared with just five games in that class.

On Thursday, mobile research firm Medialets reported there were six applications and three games with that many downloads. Analyzing a variety of data, Medialets said downloads from the Android Market had followed a similar pattern to the App Store on its first day.

On Friday, several of the same applications were still high in the Android Market rankings. The Weather Channel, price-comparison tool ShopSavvy, the WikiMobile Encyclopedia and MySpace Mobile remained top-ranked applications. ShopSavvy had the most user ratings, at 765.

The three games that on Wednesday had already been downloaded 10,000 to 50,000 times -- Pac-Man, Brain Genius Deluxe and Bonsai Blast, were joined by just two others. But Pac-Man seems to have earned the most ratings of any download by Friday, with 1,147.

The Android Market's rankings are based on a combination of user ratings and number of downloads. Games and applications appear on separate lists.

In both the iPhone and Android stores, 24 hours after launch, games made up the biggest category of type of application, followed by multimedia and "lifestyle" applications (including health and fitness, sports, shopping and photography).

The launch of the App Store was significantly different from that of the Android Market. At launch, Apple's store had 552 applications, about one-quarter of them free, and iPhones had been on sale for about a year. Within three days, it had 800 applications. The Android Market opened with just 62 products, all of which are free. Software providers won't be able to charge for products until the first quarter of next year. Starting on Monday, the store will be open to any applications developers want to offer, instead of just ones that have been chosen by Google.

Apple's App Store has now been operating for more than three months, and games are among its most prominent offerings. There are about 5,500 applications available on the App Store, which has had more than 200 million downloads.

-- Additional reporting by Nancy Gohring in Seattle.

You are here: Technology Topics » News

Most Recent Technology Topics Stories

White Papers »

Has Your Server Infrastructure Kept Pace with End User Demands?

Learn how your answer to this question compares to your peers by taking this quick poll. See how your peers are dealing with the challenge of ensuring a highly capable server infrastructure as technological shifts impact the application server platform.

Enterprise Strategy Group: The Case for a New Data-centric DLP White Paper

With increasing data growth, comes increased need for data security. The existing DLP model, with a focus on compliance/enforcement is not sufficient as the data discovery and classification capabilities are not granular enough. Read this paper to find how you can efficiently and accurately manage your risk by rapidly inventorying and classifying your data and then developing remediation workflows that support business needs.

Data Loss by the Numbers

This paper breaks down attack sources into four categories: external, malicious insiders, accidental insiders, and unknown.

Data Loss Prevention Solution for Managing E-Discovery

The rapid growth of data and technology is creating challenges for organizations as this digital data is considered to be business communications and must be preserved according the same industry-specific regulations governing the retention and discovery of emails and more traditional forms of electronic communications. This paper examines the role that Data Loss Prevention ("DLP") technology can play in helping organizations address the challenges of locating information in response to electronic discovery.

Best Practices in Data Protection - Executive Summary

This research, conducted by the Ponemon Institute, focuses on issues relating to the use of data protection solutions such as endpoint encryption and data loss prevention within the workplace.

Business Centric DLP

This report, by Jon Oltsik from Enterprise Strategy Group, examines the need for a new business-centric approach to DLP in order to align business and security requirements.

Webcasts »

Virtualization Success is a Team Effort

As greater numbers of datacenter servers transition from the physical to the virtual world, the components of virtualization success come to the fore. What scores of organizations have discovered is that success is derived from an optimal pairing of the right software platform with the right hardware platform.

Customer Spotlight: How IPC The Hospitalist Company Implemented Oracle on VMware

Have you been looking to hear about customer's experiences with the new VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager product? View this webcast to learn about VMware customer, Navicure, and their experiences testing and evaluating the recovery manager, their progress in implementing it in their environment and their advice other customers considering using vCenter.

Quantifying the Business Value of VMware View - Webcast

Many enterprises have discovered that the use of virtualization to support desktop workloads creates a range of significant benefits. These benefits include price efficiencies, improved IT management and greater agility and choice for end users.

This VMware sponsored webcast with IDC will provide both quantitative measurement of the business value -- defined as the expected ROI -- and qualitative analysis associated with the use of VMware View™. IDC will also provide an analysis of the View Composer and ThinApp™ features of VMware View, including the business value of these solutions and an overview of how they work.

Attend this webcast to learn about:
- Challenges and barriers that might impede the adoption of desktop virtualization
- Navigating roadblocks to facilitate a strategic implementation
- Optimizing qualitative and quantitative benefits to IT and your business

Deliver Private Cloud Database as a Service with VMware vFabric Data Director

VMware recently announced VMware vFabric™ Data Director, a new database deployment and operations platform that enables enterprise IT organizations to offer database as a private cloud service. Built on top of VMware vSphere 5, vFabric Data Director enables IT organizations to ontrol database sprawl through automation and consistent policy enforcement and accelerate application development cycles with self-service database management. Attend this webcast to learn how vFabric Data Director can help you build database-as-a-service in your datacenter.

Reliable Disaster Protection with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

A simple, cost-effective disaster-recovery solution for virtual environments is high on the agenda for IT organizations as they virtualize more business-critical applications with VMware. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager-the market-leading disaster-recovery product-ensures the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications. VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager provides centralized management of recovery plans, enables nondisruptive testing and automates site-failover processes.

Introduction to VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5

Traditional disaster recovery solutions are often too expensive, complex and unreliable to meet business requirements. As a result, IT departments are hesitant to expand disaster protection beyond their most critical applications, largely because they are uncertain whether the quality of the protection is really worth its cost. VMware vCenter™ Site Recovery Manager 5 is the market-leading disaster recovery product that addresses this situation for organizations of all kinds. It complements VMware vSphere to ensure the simplest and most reliable disaster protection for all virtualized applications.

Newsletter Sign-Up »

Receive the latest news test, reviews and trends on your favorite technology topics

Choose a newsletter