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| Via:TrendMicro |
According to this site, Android now has some 465,837 apps currently available in its library. That's not quite as much as iOS's more than 650,000, but it's pretty dang impressive if you ask me.
Nonetheless, what I find disturbing is the chart above which contends that as many as 129,000 of those apps are infected with malware!
Ouch! That's approximately 27 percent or more, or almost one bloody third of Android's entire app library!
According to TrendMicro the main factors driving Android's explosive malware growth is:
- The increasing popularity of Android, as highlighted both by the number of total downloaded apps (more than 10 billion via the official Android Market) and the number of users and activations, as stated by Gartner and Google Senior Vice President of Mobile Andy Rubin.
- The openness of the Android app distribution model. Unlike other mobile OSes, users are free to install applications without passing through any filtering process. This lowers the barriers to installing malicious apps considerably.
- The cybercriminal mindset: Bad guys attack where the money is.
However, I must somewhat disagree with the last statement, quite frankly, because when it comes to where the money is, well that would be iOS, not Android! For every dollar that developers earn with iOS, for example, they only earn a measly 24 cents with Android, so this probably helps to explain why most Android apps are just ports of iOS apps, though, of course, Android does have some unique apps of its own.
In conclusion, even though there is a lot to like about Android, its fragmentation and security issues are more than enough for me to avoid it like the plague. I much prefer to live in Apple's well kept and cultivated garden, rather then Android's non-cultivated garden which is over grown with weeds and creepy infected virus's and what not?
And that's my 2 cents for this overcast Wednesday, June 20, 2012
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