App downloads on Android overtake Apple - selling more than iPhone and iPad combined

Google's Android platform has become the most popular platform for downloading apps, beating the iPhone and the iPad combined.

The operating system accounted for 44 per cent of all app downloads in the second quarter of this year, a survey has revealed.

Apple only got 31 per cent across all of its platforms. The figures were published the day after the release of Steve Jobs’ biography.

In the book the Apple founder rails against the Android and brands it a ‘stolen product’ for its similarity to the iPhone operating system.

He also threatens to fight until his ‘last dying breath’ and go to ‘thermonuclear war’ to stop it being a success.

Last week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer also derided the operating system, saying you needed to be a 'computer scientist' to understand Android phones.

But a flood of low-priced handsets this summer has catapulted Android ahead of Apple for the first time in terms of app downloads.

It follows in the wake of reports that Samsung's Galaxy Android handsets had outsold iPhone during the last quarter.

Google launched Android in 2007 as an open-source platform, which means anybody was able to use it for free and redesign the hardware as well as coming up with their own software.

Its success has helped make Samsung one of the world’s most successful smartphone makers even amid the unending demand for the iPhone.

The study from ABI research found that Android’s success was helped by a 36 per cent increase in phone shipments from the previous three months.

Yet despite the increases, by some measures it still has not beaten Apple.
Dan Shey, practice director of mobile services at ABI, said: ‘Android’s app downloads per user still lag behind Apple’s by 2 to 1’.

So far Android has some 500,000 app submissions and 315,000 for sale compared to 600,000 submissions and 456,000 on sale for Apple’s products.

Google recently updated its Android operating system to 4.0 with the nickname ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’ whilst Apple has completed a major update for the iPhone as well.

The biography of Jobs, written by U.S. author Walter Isaacson, tells how the tech guru erupted in a rage when he learned the details about Android.

During one discussion about a patent lawsuit over the Android Isaacson writes that Jobs said: ‘I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this’.
He continued: ‘Our lawsuit is saying, 'Google you f****** ripped off the iPhone, wholesale ripped us off.