The number of apps available for downloads on Android Market reached the 400,000 milestone recently, indicating, experts said, that developers have begun regarding the Google platform equally lucrative as that of Apple's.

Android Market's rising significance stemmed from Google's spirited efforts to promote interesting and helpful applications that developers submitted, experts said, hoping that users will take notice, then download and keep them.

The idea of consumers spreading word about Android's deep reservoir of apps is not also lost on Google's agenda, which has largely adapted the way Apple marketed applications hosted on the iTunes App Store.

Google employed editors to scan the most noteworthy apps on its market, Appolicious wrote, tasking these people to classify apps and promote them on Android Market's more recognizable spots.

Without really admitting it, Google studied the good benefits that were netted by Apple's strategy, tweaked them and implemented them with good results, Appolicious said.

The results were far more incredible than expected: Android Market more than doubled its apps contents from just eight months ago, according to GigaOM, and logged some one billion downloads as monthly average in 2011.

Apple still leads the way, which boasts of 10 billion accumulated downloads by the early months of last year yet Google is upbeat that with some 700,000 Android devices being activated, on average as of the Holiday Season, its numbers will prove much higher by the time final estimates came in.

The most important thing, experts asserted, is through the fierce battle for supremacy being waged by Apple and Google, consumers and app developers mostly reap the benefits, with the latter seemingly happy that finally Google had devised way for their products to be noticed in Android Market.

Almost all developers featured by Google on its apps market have reported hundreds of thousand, even millions, of new downloads since they first hit the front page of the Android Market, Appolicious said.

The boost, experts said, should prompt these developers to strive further in improving their existing apps and designing more that would catch the eye and interest of millions of users out there.

Inevitably, the competition between Apple and Google heats up, paving way for more exciting and better quality application in the future to be enjoyed by users from both divides.