Meerkat Beats Twitter's Periscope To Android Phones In Latest Battle Of The Live Streaming Apps

For the past month, two live-video-streaming apps have been vying for smartphone users, but both were focused on one slice of the market: iPhone users. Now, early entry Meerkat may beat Twitter-owned Periscope, again, by launching its Android product first.

Meerkat is signing up Android users in a public beta of the app via a Google form. There is no indication of how many users it will garner or when the app will become available.

This release could mean that Meerkat is once again beating Periscope at capturing a new audience first. Meerkat was released in March during the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas, and attracted an early set of users. Twitter released Periscope a few weeks later.

But launching first does not guarantee loyalty nor the better product. Since its debut, Periscope has overtaken Meerkat in popularity. Periscope has more than three times the number of video streams, according to analytics from Topsy, and ranks in the top 200 of Apple’s app store while Meerkat is absent.

Capturing the Android market would add a whole new user base for both apps. Bloomberg reported that Periscope and Meerkat combined have signed up fewer than 1 percent of current iPhone users. Twitter has confirmed it also has an Android app “in the works.”