Apple App Advantage Eroded as Google Narrows IPhone Lead: Tech
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Apple Inc., five years after popularizing the term “app” and sparking a mobile-software boom, is losing its advantage in smartphone applications to Google Inc., diminishing one of the iPhone’s selling points.
Sales of applications from Google’s online store doubled in the fourth quarter from the prior three months, while Apple’s revenue climbed 20 percent, according to market researcher App Annie. And some software firms such as Ngmoco LLC, which historically wrote programs for Apple before Google, have put the two operating systems on equal footing -- in some cases developing for Google first.