During its fourth quarter earnings call , Google revealed that the Android Marketplace, its app store, has 800 applications now available in it.
That's miniscule compared to Apple's (AAPL) iPhone/iPod touch App Store, which has more than 15,000 apps available.
We know quantity and quality are different things. Google didn’t go into download numbers for the 800 apps, but you can bet that’s only because the number would look even worse when compared to Apple’s 500 million downloads of iPhone apps so far.
Android better hurry in boosting its Marketplace soon, app stores from BlackBerry, Microsoft and Palm all appear to be just around the corner. We expect Android to get a major boost when more phones running the platform go on sale this year and when developers are allowed to charge for their software.
But for now, it's still a decent indication of how much more time and money software companies have spent investing so far in Apple's platform versus Google's.
