Google has announced yet another huge milestone related to its Android Market.  The mobile app powerhouse has surpassed 10 billion total downloads.

Just six months ago Google announced that it had surpassed 6 billion total downloads, which means it almost doubled that number in only six month’s time.  The company said it took 21 months to reach its first billion downloads.  Recent research from Ovum pegged total mobile app downloads next year at an estimated 18 billion — a sharp increase from the 7.4 billion downloaded in 2010.  Ovum also predicted that a total of 8.1 billion of those apps will be Android.

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The folks over at Mobile17.com have published a comprehensive infographic on the Android OS ecosystem, including general usage patterns and demographics on the people that use it.

Covering everything from Android market share to the spread of devices that run Android, to the areas in the world where Android is most popular, the graphic contains just about everything you’d want to know about how Android is taking over the mobile world.  What’s most interesting is the data on the Android users themselves, such as the fact that Android users 10% more likely to be male and that Android users are 35% more likely to have just one email address compared to other OS users.

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According to the latest data made public by app marketplace analytics firm Ditimo, of the more than 200,000 applications currently available in Google’s Android Market, the vast majority are being poorly downloaded or altogther overlooked by consumers.

20% of all free applications and 80% of all paid applications have been downloaded less than 100 times in the Google Android Market worldwide to date.

Writing for the Distimo blog, author Hendrik Koekkoek says that it is “more challenging for developers in the Google Android Market than in the Apple App Store to monetize using a one-off fee monetization model. We found that only two paid applications have been downloaded more than half a million times in the Google Android Market worldwide to date, while six paid applications in the Apple App Store for iPhone generate the same number of downloads within a two month timeframe in the United States alone.”

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I’ve long wondered when someone would start leveraging existing LBS apps as a platform to add layers of functionality on top of, and it looks like a team at Jumpfox — a mobile app development firm — has done just that.

They’ve created a new startup and mobile app called “TappLocal,” which aims to emulate the rewards and location-based offers being integrated in existing LBS apps like Foursquare and Yelp, but do so independently to create a so-called “location-based ad-network” strictly for highly relevant LBS offers.  The tech is then offered up to partner LBS apps for integration.

Here’s how it works: TappLocal uses their backend to create a geofence around certain partner venues.  When a user crosses that boundary and happens to be using one of the partner apps, a deal indicator will pop-up in real-time.  Clicking this area opens a larger area explaining exactly what the deal is.  Simply click one more time to verify you wish to use the deal, show it to the store that it’s valid at, and the offer is validated and redeemed on-the-spot.

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Taptu today announced a major update to its popular Android app that allows you to search the “mobile touch Web,” or sites specifically suited for touch-screen devices.

Launched in late 2009, the Taptu Android app was known as a “lite” application that was basically a link to Taptu’s mobile site.  With the update, Taptu is now a native Android application.  In addition to search, Taptu now allows users to search the Android Market as well.  When you do a search on a specific type of information, for example, you’ll see traditional search results as well as top apps from the Market.  For example, if you search for Weather, you’ll see the Weather Channel’s website along side the Weather Channel’s application.

Another interesting update to the app is the addition of “Result Card Flick,” which returns search results as a deck of result ‘cards’ that are easily browse-able.  Whether the result is an image, blog post, website or Android App from the Market, you can flick through the cards to make things easier to find.  In addition, here’s some other major enhancements courtesy of the update:

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Mobile Roadie, a provider of a dead simple mobile app building platform for iPhone and Android apps, recently announced a new “Pro” version of the platform that allows for even more customization and functionality.

The platform offers a beautiful interface to design apps, allowing full customization of menu layouts, colors, buttons, and fonts.  The new Pro version also supports multiple categories of content, a global search for users and newly designed landscape views, just to name a few.

The new platform has already been used by some big names to create some pretty impressive apps.  Three examples include the Wynn Las Vegas, indie electro label Ninja Tune and music and lifestyle publication The FADER.  ”We are very picky and controlling when it comes to brand integrity,” says Andy Cohn, EVP and Group Publisher of FADER Media, Inc. “Every single part of our user’s engagement has to experience The FADER brand and culture.”  The FADER is also offering exclusive content available to view when people download their app.

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It was estimated today that the Android Market could hit 100,000 total apps by the end of July, indicating a huge milestone for the open app marketplace.

Through stats distributed by Androlib, it’s estimated that there’s roughly 90,000 total apps in the Android Market, with more than 9,000 added since the beginning of July- clearly indicating it will surpass the 100,000 mark by the end of the month, if not sooner.  What’s interesting about the equation is that Google last night announced App Inventor, which allows anyone to create Android apps with ease- which could be a good or bad thing for the quality of apps that hit the Market.  One thing’s for sure though, the sheer number of apps will surely surge in the very near future.

Apple’s App Store has surpassed the 200,000 mark, which is substantially more than the Android Market, but with  more and more Android-based devices hitting the market, and the promise of Android tablets coming down the pipeline, Android will surely be nipping at its heels soon.  With more devices coming, increased developer interest in the Android platform in general, and now the introduction of App Inventor, the Android Market will undoubtedly become the biggest mobile app  marketplace available.

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