The latest insight from research2guidance reveals that the Android Market contains 319,161 applications - having added 42,000 in September alone - while the Apple App store has 459,589 apps. The actual number of applications that have been published on the Android Market exceeded 500,000 last month, with the Apple App Store seeing just over 600,000 successful submissions.
This means that 37% of published apps were later removed from the Android Market, compared with 24% removed from the Apple App Store.
The suggestion is that less-onerous submission requirements for the Android Market have seen developers publish more low-quality or trial apps than are submitted to Apple. This is reinforced by the finding that over 78% of apps removed from the Android Market were free.
In addition, research2guidance says the number of free Android apps seems to be increasing. At the end of September 2011, 34% of active apps were paid - yet that figure has fallen to 26% this month.
[Android Market Insights document]