An app war between powerhouse Apple and tech giant Google could be underway for 2013.
Apple announced Monday that it had sold a staggering 20 billion app downloads from their online app store in 2012, bringing the number of apps sold from Apple to 40 billion worldwide.
As the LA Times reports, the number of downloaded apps does not include apps that were updates or re-downloads.
Cupertino-giant Apple reports that in December there were at least 500 million active accounts, and that a record-breaking number of apps, more than two billion, were downloaded during the month.
Among the most popular downloads were the "Temple Run" game, created by Imangi Studios, which was downloaded more than 75 million times. The "DragonVale" and "Clash of Clans" games combined to sell more than $100 million for Apple's App Store while Uber, Flipboard, HotelTonight, and AirBnB drew millions of users on iOS.
"It has been an incredible year for the iOS developer community," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services. "Developers have made over seven billion dollars on the App Store, and we continue to invest in providing them with the best ecosystem so they can create the most innovative apps in the world."
However, Apple isn't the only game in town anymore. Making a serious bid for app download supremacy, the Google Play Store has been recording serious grown since mid-2012, when the store's available apps grew to 700,000.
According to a new projection from Sociable, Google Play Store could reach one million apps by June. Currently, the numbers from Sociable project that there are roughly 800,000 apps available on Google Play at present time.
"We predict that Google Play will reach 900,000 apps before April 2013 and will reach one million apps in size as early as June 2013," the website writes.
On the net, consumers are weighing in about which of the two stores they prefer.
"Everything on Apple seems much more expensive. For example, I rented the movie Never Let Me Go from Quickflix for $3, but on iTunes you pay $10. Furthermore, to have access to iTunes you need an Apple device, all of which are overpriced anyway. Talk about a rip off. Products from Samsung, Amazon, or Google are much better value," wrote a user named NORAK on Digital Trends.com.
"Google has to hope Samsung phone users buy lots of apps, music, etc. Apple's the only one that's got both ends covered," writes user Ird555 on iDownload Blog.com.
"Would be nice to see total stats across Android. Google Play is the main market, but far from the only one, and not the main one in countries like China. I access three of them regularly myself," wrote Len Derby on Venture Beat.
"[J]ust like every other App store, 70+ % of them are crap that no one in their right might will ever use. 20% of them are also old, outdated and thus will also never be used. So a total of 10% of those apps are worth your time! Both Google and Apple need to stop the "number of apps on our app store' war. It's dumb," posted user MapleHamwich on Mobilesyrup.com.
"Sadly 99.9% of all apps (Android, Apple, Windows) are garbage. So this battle of which OS has the most apps are so overrated," wrote a user titled "Shawn" on the same site.
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