Games doing well on Android Market

Analysts have been crunching the numbers from the day one of the Android Market store being open for business.

Analysis firm Medialets has some interesting stats. There were 62 apps available on Android Market in its first 24 hours, and it estimates that the average app has been downloaded more than 7,800 times.

At the time of writing, nine apps had generated more than 10,000 free downloads on the store, including three games: Glu's Brain Genius Deluxe and Bonsai Blast, and Namco's Pac-Man.

As on iPhone's App Store, games is the most populated category on Android Market so far, despite the fact that a number of big mobile publishers are waiting until January to release Android games, when they'll be able to charge for them.

The interesting thing so far is that the relative popularity of each app category is pretty similar on Android Market and the App Store, although Android has more lifestyle and productivity apps as a proportion of its catalogue.

Games are being promoted as a major selling point for iPhone at the moment, fuelling the size of the App Store's games catalogue. It remains to be seen if the same will happen for Android, a platform which may have more of a focus on web-originated applications.

One point that's puzzling us: if there were 62 apps on Android Market in its first day, with an average of 7,800 downloads each, that's only 483,600 downloads in total.

Which makes us wonder about those reports of 1.5 million pre-orders for the T-Mobile G1 Android handset. Perhaps many didn't arrive and get activated on day one?