Instagram released its much-anticipated Android app yesterday to unbelievable success, with reportedly over one million downloads and 2,000 signups per minute in less than 24 hours (myself included), a kind of debut that probably won’t be topped for quite a while.

Android users have long held out hope that the popular iOS app would land on their devices. As of March, Instagram had somewhere in the ballpark of 27 to 30 million users, making it one of the hottests services in the mobile space. Apparently, taking digitally-filtered pictures of random stuff made a lot of Android users envious, as over 430,000 signed up for the first crack at the app after its release on the platform was announced.

After using the app for a bit, I have to say I like it a lot, but I do somewhat agree with others that it doesn’t quite “feel” like an Android app. It definitely seems somewhat more like a port with some added and subtracted functionalities than something that might have been intended as a pure Android app.

Despite being just as capable as iOS in hosting sleek, well designed apps (Twitter and Facebook quickly come to mind), Android simply doesn’t exclusively have anything as sexy as iOS had with Instagram, or currently has with Flipboard and many other services. This is going to have to change if Google hopes to keep Android users sticking around. Whether its a problem of accommodating developers or a matter of time before the OS turns a corner in the market, the battle for smartphone supremacy is eventually going to be won or lost in software.

Apple has given Instagram plenty of lift to being a premier service, with plenty promotion in its app store and a few awards for good measure. Android is making great strides, but if Google is really going to put a serious dent in the iPhone’s leadership of the market, they’ll need to empower developers to build not merely apps, but brands that will make iPhone users start to feel some jealousy.