Canalys: Android tablet app selection inferior to iOS’s

The latest report from independent analyst company Canalys indicates that some 30% of the top 50 tablet apps found on iOS do not have an Android equivalent in the Google Play Store.

A further 18% were not optimized for tablet use, offering smartphone interfaces blown up to tablet screen size.

The report indicates that there are some 375,000 apps in the Apple App Store that are designed specifically with iPad users in mind – just a fraction of what is available on Google Play.

Several of these top apps also had paid titles on iOS that are only available as free, ad-supported versions on Android. Canalys argues that in order to reduce the reliance developers have on in-app ads, Google needs to further ease the process by which users register credit card and billing information through Google Play.

Canalys Senior Analyst Tim Shepherd said that getting customers to spend money on apps is critical to increasing the tablet app quality in the Play Store:

App developers need to see clear potential to build robust and sustainable business models around apps built for the platform, so increasing monetization potential must be a priority. And for tablet apps in particular, Google should go further with changes to the Play store to ensure more rigorously managed, high-quality, optimized experiences are highlighted, to the benefit of consumers, and to reward those developers who invest the time and resources in building them with improved discoverability.

The list of the apps referenced by the study can be found here.