Matthew Panzarino:
Yesterday, during the Google I/O keynote, Google announced that it had hit 48B downloads of apps on the Google Play Store. During the same keynote, the counter on Apple’s site ticked over to 50B App Store downloads.
But there has been some question about how exactly the two companies tabulate their numbers.
Turns out, that Apple and Google count them in a very similar fashion. Here’s Panzarino again:
Both Apple and Google tabulate unique downloads of apps per user account. This means that they count only one download of an app no matter how many devices that you install that app on after you purchase it. Neither company counts updates in its app download numbers. These are purely single downloads from their stores.
If the two numbers are really on even footing, that’s great news for Android.