Growing fast: Google Play

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Google's online Play shop of applications for Android-powered smartphones or tablets is growing fast, a report released Thursday by market tracker Distimo said.

The aggregate daily revenue at Google Play shops across the 20 largest countries where they are available climbed 43 percent during the past four months, while sales at Apple's online App Store increased 21 percent.

"Google Play is just starting to rival the Apple App Store in a few countries on a worldwide scale, even though it is still losing in terms of daily revenues," Distimo said in the report.

Apple's App Store catering to its iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch devices took in more than $15 million dollars a day in November, while daily revenue at Google Play was just shy of $3.5 million, according to Distimo.

"There were many success stories in 2012 about applications that became very successful in a matter of a few days and gathered millions of downloads and revenues," the analytics firm said in the report.

"Looking at the worldwide daily download and revenue volumes, the opportunity is really huge."

Smartphone game application "Draw Something" reached a million users in just nine days, while Asian publisher Naver launched five games in November that quickly became hits.

Naver game application Line Pop was downloaded 1.75 million times within three days of its release, according to Distimo.

A report released this month by research firm IDC projected that Android operating system will power more than two-thirds of smartphones sold worldwide in 2012, and will remain the dominant platform for at least the next four years.

IDC also boosted its forecast for global tablet sales for 2012 to 122.3 million, from 117.1 million, in large part due to demand for Android tablets and the new iPad mini.

© 2012 AFP

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