It used to be said that Apple, the iPhone and the Apple iPad were all about the apps and Apple dominated the app space when it comes to offering mobile apps, but apparently when it comes to app downloads Apple is no longer the leader in the field because rival Android has snatched that little title from iOS, no doubt something that will get up Apple’s nose.

According to an article over on Slash Gear, the guys at Business Week are reporting Android surpassed iOS in application downloads in the 2nd quarter with Android grabbing 44 percent of total app downloads while iOS managed 31 percent according to figures by ABI Research.

The research firm also noted that Android handset shipments also leapt some 36 percent in the previous 3 months. However, the practice director of mobile services at ABI, Dan Shey says, “Android’s app downloads per user still lag behind Apple’s by 2 to 1.”

ABI also stated that this year will see a rise in global downloads of news, music, games and others apps by 29 billion, which is more than triple the amount downloaded in 2010, that’s a lot of apps.

Currently there are 500,000 Android app submissions with approximately 315,000 available via the Android Market as of September while the iTunes App Store has 600,000 submissions with roughly 456,000 available.

Personally I’m not a real big user of mobile apps, I don’t really spend a great deal of time playing games on my Android handset, but what I do like about the Android platform is that many of the apps are free, such as the very popular Angry Birds apps, which has got to be better than having to pay, whereas iOS has to pay.

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