Several reports are coming in regarding the projected total Android App downloads for 2011 to be 8.1 billion, and that's news because it's higher than the 6 billion for the iPhone. Last year, Apple had the lead with 2.7 billion download where Android trailed at 1.4 billion. Analyst Ovum has announced these figures, but also gave the warning that things in the revenue department were not about to change: "Although Android phones will lead on total download numbers, iPhone will continue to dominate the market in terms of revenues from paid-for apps, reaching $2.86 billion in 2016, compared to $1.5 billion for Android.” Note the wording carefully - paid for apps. Google is at heart an advertising company, so their goal is to increase the surface area on which their ads are shown. Are things slowly but surely tilting towards the free ad-supported app model?
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Google recently announced the launch of Android Instant Apps, a new technology which allows just the bare minumum of an App to be downloaded from links, bypassing the Play Store. This sounds cool enough on its own, but the implications of this reach far deeper than at first appears, and could end up changing the entire internet.