• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 26, 2012

Giving Apple something to think about, Google just announced that its Play app store has hit 25 billion downloads.

That’s “a little behind the pace of Apple’s App Store, which hit that mark in March of this year,” notes GigaOm. “Google Play also has 675,000 apps overall compared to 700,000 for the App Store.”

The new figures “show that Google is closing the gap on Apple, which recently announced that 90% of the 700,000 apps in the App Store are downloaded every month,” The Next Web writes.

“With Google’s larger market share and fast-growing Play Store, it seems like it will soon catch Apple in both of these metrics,” 9to5Google suggests.

Indeed, “At this rate we could see Android downloads catch up to Apple by year's end,” Gizmodo seconds.

Regarding the devices that consumers need to use all those apps, AllThingsD recalls: “Google said earlier this month that there have been about 500 million total activated Android devices, and Apple counted 400 million iOS devices sold as of June -- a number that’s not standing still.”

“That growth in downloads is no doubt tied to a bump in Android device activations, and there’s been no shortage of those either,” according to TechCrunch. “Android chief Andy Rubin tweeted earlier this month that Google was seeing 1.3 million Android device activations per day.”

“To commemorate the occasion, [Google] will be offering deals on apps, music, movies, and books over the next five days, including $0.25 games from Electronic Arts, Rovio, Gameloft, and others,” The Verge reports.