Growing at one billion a month.
Google confirmed the milestone in a blog post yesterday and said it would celebrate by offering some high profile apps at just 10c each for the next ten days.
They include Asphalt 6 HD, Color & Draw for Kids, Endomondo Sports Tracker Pro, Fieldrunners HD, Great Little War Game, Minecraft, Paper Camera, Sketchbook Mobile, Soundhound Infinity and SwiftKey X.
The 10bn figure is still some way behind iOS app downloads, which stood at over 18 billion when Apple announced its iPhone 4S in October.
But the gap is closing. And don't forget that these stats are for Android Market only – they don't take account of third party stores like Amazon and GetJar.
A study by ABI Research earlier this year said that iOS accounted for 5.6 billion accumulated app downloads in 2010, compared to 1.9 billion downloads for all of its rivals, including Android Market, BlackBerry App World and Ovi Store.
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And by July 2011, Android had 6bn to iOS's 15bn.
It can't be long before the Google platform catches Apple's in terms of app download, just be virtue of the sheer market share of Android devices – which hit 50 per cent in the US last month by some estimates.
And yet there's a certain irony here in the fact that many observers believe Google is uncommitted to native apps and would prefer consumers to user the mobile web and thus support its ad-centric view of the world.
Indeed, Google has been accused of a lack of curation and rigour in the management of Android Market.
