Android Market

Google has removed nearly two dozen malware-infected apps from its official Android Market in the last several days, according to San Francisco-based Lookout Security.

Security researchers have found more malicious Android apps on Google's official download site and being spread through Chinese app stores.

The four major mobile apps stores run by Apple, Google, Nokia and Research in Motion should pull in a combined $3.8 billion in revenue this year, according to research firm IHS.

Google said during the company's earnings call on Thursday that more than 3 billion apps have been installed from the Android Market so far, and around 350,000 smartphones are activated every day. The new figures highlight the exceptional growth of Android, but when it comes to app stores, Apple's is still king.

A security researcher lost a sure $15,000 at this week's Pwn2Own hacking contest because he had earlier reported the bug to Google, which has patched the vulnerability in its Android Market.

Google will build new safeguards into Android Market, its application store for the Android mobile OS, following an attack that infected thousands of phones and forced the company to wipe the malware remotely from phones, it said late Saturday.

Openness, one of Android's big advantages, can also be the Achilles' heel of the platform. Google has pulled the kill switch on 21 free malware apps from the Android Market and from around 50,000 devices, according to reports. The apps were free illegal downloads of popular apps in the Android Market, repackaged with malware able to steal details from a user's phone.

To spur Android app purchases and help application developers, Google will introduce a range of new features around its online Android Market, including an in-app payment option and expanded carrier billing.

A developer is reporting that Google has banned his tethering application from the Android Market, one of the first hints that the store may not be as open as Google has promised.

Some of the new applications loaded to the Android Market since it opened on Monday don't work very well, crash the phone, aren't particularly elegant and in one case, uses commands written in Chinese. But analysts say the good will start to outweigh the bad.