Google Inc. is preparing to celebrate its 10 billionth download on the Android Market with a 10-day promotional offer that will see ten apps on sale for $0.10 throughout the offer period.

The Internet search giant said the pace at which apps were being downloaded was starting to accelerate; its statistics seem to show that it took 22 months to reach the 1 billion download mark but only one month to go from 9 to 10 billion. In comparison, Apple hit 1 billion downloads after nine month.

The U.S.-based company's Android smartphone platforms became the world's most popular in early 2011, when it overtook Nokia's Symbian. Sales are believed to have been helped by the appearance of Android tablets such as Amazon's Kindle Fire.

Among the first titles to be discounted are Reckless Racing (and Reckless Racing PLAY, the version optimised for Sony's Xperia PLAY handset), Fruit Ninja (a popular fruit-slicing game), AirSync by doubleTwist (wireless music syncing for the well-received doubleTwist media player), Flick Golf!, Read It Later Pro (a popular web clipper and Instapaper clone) and Beautiful Widgets (a comprehensive widgets collection).

Check out a trailer of Reckless Racing:

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