The number doubles the amount of available apps in just the past five months. Analysts attribute the rapid growth to the increasing number of Android based handsets coming on to the global market, which is encouraging more developers to target the platform.
"One way of noticing that the OS is poised for a big breakthrough at the expense of Windows Mobile, Symbian and other operating systems designed to run on various mobile devices, is the number of applications already available for download in the platform's own application store, Android Market," Robin Wauters wrote for MobileCrunch. "My guess [is that] Android Market will be serving 50,000 apps as early as Q2 2010."
Although Google is tight-lipped about the number of available apps, Android resource site AndroLib.com is monitoring the device and its applications and reports the milestone. Of that amount, it claims that more than 60 percent are freely available.
While this amount is still a fraction of the more than 100,000 apps available for the iPhone, some analysts caution that the number of apps is not the end-all measure of a device's popularity, profitability for app developers or potential market share.
The challenge for developers is in providing an app worth paying for, when so many competitive offers are available for free. This is not anything unique to the Android app market, but the percentages show how difficult attaining this balance may be.