Android download figures revealed

We took a look at the popularity of application downloads on a variety of smartphone platforms just the other day, though Android was noticeable by its absence.

TechCrunch has been back on to analytics provider Compete to plug the gap, and details on the popularity of the Android Market have been gathered.

It’s already been suggested that each G1 owner has downloaded an average of 40 apps, though a breakdown of those figures reveal something of an anomaly with the Android. Primarily, some G1 users have never downloaded a single application.

Although this does leave you wondering why they’d buy a smartphone in the first place. It also highlights the poor job Google (and app developers, for that matter) have been doing promoting its download service.

A lot of Android users (43 per cent) have only looked at free apps, though considering the Market only began accepting paid transactions quite recently, that’s a statistic that’s likely to change pretty quickly.

One way or another, Google needs to get on top of Market promotion if it wants Android to stay afloat in the increasingly competitive smartphone digital download arena.