Apple’s App Store website more than doubled the number of applications available in 2010, bringing its total to more than 300,000 apps.
As Enterprise Mobile Today reports, while that growth is impressive, Google’s Android Market enjoyed even more impressive growth on a percentage basis, surging six-fold to more than 130,000 apps.
Meanwhile, Research In Motion and Nokia both saw triple-digit growth in the number of mobile apps offered at their respective mobile app repositories, as clear a sign as any that smartphones and tablets are rapidly replacing PCs and notebooks as consumers computing devices of choice.
According to report from mobile app researcher Distimo, the top 300 free applications averaged more than 3 million downloads a day in the U.S. compared to 350,000 paid downloads. However, paid downloads outpaced free downloads by roughly 30 percent between June and December of 2010.
Android Market’s impressive growth reflects the momentum Android-based devices have enjoyed in the past year while taking share away from Apple, RIM (NASDAQ: RIMM) and Nokia.