Because having Larry Page and Timothy Cook compare their respective manhood would be inappropriate, another thing for Google and Apple to compare is the amount of downloads of mobile apps designed for iOS and the Android environments. While Apple still has the upper hand with 30 billion app installs, Google’s Android mobile operating system is experiencing success too, to the tune of 20 billion installs.

At the Google I/O Keynote, the totals for both installs and the amount of apps and games available was revealed, and it’s pretty clear Google Play is holding its own against its Apple competition. As you can see from the lead image, Google is boasting 20 billion application installs. Furthermore, there are 600,000 apps and games available at Google Play, compared to Apple’s 650,000. What does this mean besides both companies offer users a lot of ways to augment their phones? Well, aside from the fact that users of either iPhones or Android phones have a lot of choices when it comes to applications they can pick from, it also indicates that Apple and Google are well ahead of the competition regarding being the a consumer favorite.

With the looming collapse of Rim, which makes the BlackBerry devices, perhaps the only platform left to make inroads against the Android/iPhone stranglehold is the Windows Phone. No word on how many apps their store offers, but it’s probably not as many as Google Play or the App Store.

As pointed out by the Verge, considering the fact that Google announced 10 billion downloads at the end of 2011, and they’ve already doubled that in less than a year, how long before Android apps catch up to Apple’s 30-billion-downloads total?

[Lead image courtesy]