Android Portion of Free Apps Is Twice IPhone's, Researcher Says

Google Inc.’s Android application store has twice the proportion of free software as smartphone rivals Apple Inc. and Research In Motion Ltd., according to market researcher Distimo.

Free applications comprised 60 percent of software on Android Market in July, Distimo said. That compares with 29 percent for the Apple App Store for iPhone and 26 percent for RIM’s BlackBerry App World, the Utrecht, Netherlands-based researcher said on its website yesterday.

Attracting more app developers may help Google catch up with the App Store, which contains more than 250,000 programs, three times the 70,000 for Android, according to company figures. Annual revenue from smartphone-application downloads, ads and services is estimated to almost triple to $40.7 billion in 2014 from this year, according to researcher Booz & Co.

Android Market is available in 46 countries. The store may be struggling to attract users for paid programs because only people in 14 nations can download these applications, which are distributed by developers in 9 countries. Android buyers also have to sign up for a Google Checkout account in order to download paid apps, it said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at palpeyev@bloomberg.net.