Yesterday, Google announced the launch of Google Play, a rebranded Android Market which consolidates all of Google’s media offerings, including apps, music, movies and e-books, into one portal. But it appears that Google’s ambitions to create its own iTunes-like experience won’t stop there. In the Help Center for the new Google Play, empty pages titled “Audio Books” as well as “Magazines and… → Read More
Google often confuses me. The company, with its thousands of genius employees, often makes the most brain-dead decisions. Just earlier today Google rolled out their latest twist on the Android Market — but it’s not called Android Market anymore. Instead of simply redesigning the e-store, Google also re-branded the whole thing to Google Play.
The reasoning is sound: the company wanted to… → Read More
Google’s Android Market has undergone some tremendous changes over the last year or so. What started as just a standalone app store has quickly grown to encompass e-books, music, videos, and now Google feels like the “Android Market” moniker is getting to be too restrictive, too constraining for what they’re really trying to deliver to their users.
That’s why Google is officially putting… → Read More
A little more than a week ago, the Clik smartphone app launched, resulting plenty of press coverage and more than 100,000 downloads on iOS (at least according to Clik). But there was one area where the launch fizzled — in the Android Market, where the Clik app is apparently invisible to searches.
“Over the weekend, as we get all this hype, nobody could find our app,” says CEO Ted… → Read More
Android malware has been an issue over the past year. Granted, most of the numbers we see out of security software companies are inflated — including malicious apps from third-party sources and ignoring small download figures — but that’s not to say that we can just brush that dirt off our shoulders.
Google knows this, and has for a while. Despite the fact that downloads of… → Read More
Getting featured in the Android Market is starting to have a meaningful impact for mobile app developers. According to the recent news from fitness app maker RunKeeper, the company saw a 637% increase in downloads since November after just a few days of being a featured app in the Android Market “Health & Fitness” section.
But is RunKeeper seeing the boost because of the New Year’s… → Read More
Google’s been celebrating their recent Android Market milestone with a string of discounted (and awesome) apps, but really — what’s a celebration without an infographic? Thankfully, Google has come through on that front with a slew of stats about the Android Market and the people who use it. → Read More
Research firm research2guidance this morning published a (free) report, offering key findings from an analysis of mobile applications store Android Market.
According to the firm, the number of active mobile apps in Android Market stood at 319,161 at the end of last month, compared to 459,589 apps that are available in Apple’s App store (the company claims there are 500,000 apps, actually). → Read More
There’s no doubt Android Market will at some point offer more applications for download and/or purchase than Apple’s App Store, as the latter’s growth has been slowing down of late, while the Android application store’s growth rate has been accelerating.
In a recent report, app store analytics company Distimo forecasted that Android would surpass the App Store in size before the end of July 2011… → Read More
Google was originally set to debut in-app payments support for Android in the fourth quarter of 2010, and recently said that the launch would be delayed until the end of this quarter. Be that as it may, the company is set to launch another much-anticipated (at least by many app developers or publishers) Web-based in-app transactions product in May 2011. (see updates below)
Jambool, the company… → Read More
Today at their Mountain View headquarters, Google held an event to show off Honeycomb, the latest version of the Android operating system. After some demos of the OS itself, Android engineering director Chris Yerga took the stage to show off a big new feature: the Android Market Webstore. Yep, the Market just hit the web. Finally. And it’s already live. Find it here.
Yerga notes that up until… → Read More
While T-mobile have supported carrier billing on the Android Market since those far-off days of ’09, they have — up until this point — been the only US carrier to do so.
BUT NO LONGER! As announced on the Android Developer’s Blog today, Google have been busy rolling out the feature (alongside that recent Market update) to a number of AT&T customers over the last few days. → Read More
If you’ve been holding off downloading Hot Buns for Beginners* from the Android Market, for fear that it may not be about baking, then Google have some great news for you: the Android Market will soon include a content rating system.
In an email sent out to developers today, Google outlined the new policy (you can find it here), which involves a self-rating system where the developer places their… → Read More
As Apple CEO Steve Jobs like to point out, the Android Market is great for users who want to find porn. While that may not be exactly true, other Android-based stores are trying to make it true. And perhaps perception was getting too close to reality, as today, Google has announced that in the next few weeks, they’ll be showing content ratings for all apps listed in the Market.
While Android has… → Read More
Android are updating their Market this Friday, and have scheduled a 6-hour outage for developers (not consumers, though).
Questions have been raised on what the update will bring (especially with Gingerbread looming around the corner), but today, Android have sent out an email to all registered developers outlining some of the new features/requirements for app listings in the Market.
Follow us… → Read More
Well, well, well. An eagle-eyed reader tells us PayPal posted a short announcement yesterday on its corporate blog, only to pull it mere seconds later. As you can tell from the URL, PayPal was poised to announce support for “all three major mobile platforms” (also see retweets of the blog post).
That is: support for Apple’s App Store, Blackberry App World … and Android Market.
How do we… → Read More
Just before the weekend, Google dropped word to developers that paid Android apps support was on its way to more countries than the 14 currently supported. In the email, the company did not specify a timeframe other than “over the next few weeks” and stopped short of saying which markets would be gaining support for paid apps.
Now app store analytics company Distimo tells us they’ve noticed paid… → Read More
App store analytics provider Distimo yesterday published its latest report, once again zooming in on the pricing of mobile applications across a variety of platforms.
Consistent with its previous findings, Google’s Android Market has by far the largest share of free applications available compared to other mobile app store, but the gap is also widening.
In July 2010, 60% of all applications on… → Read More
You might say the company’s just a tad late to the party, but Miniclip has finally seen the light and is expanding its casual gaming empire by entering the world of mobile games.
With a self-declared user base of more than 57 million casual gamers worldwide and a library of more than 600 online games, it’s a wonder really that the London-based company hasn’t made the move sooner.
After all… → Read More
Despite earlier reports to the contrary, Android Market watcher AndroLib says there aren’t 100,000 applications available in the store – yet. There have, however, 100,000 apps been submitted to Android Market since its public debut, the site wagered this morning, up from approximately 5,000 in June 2009.
The Androlib directory covers multiple markets, including international ones, so not all apps… → Read More
Despite earlier reports to the contrary, Android Market watcher AndroLib says there aren’t 100,000 applications available in the store – yet. There have, however, 100,000 apps been submitted to Android Market since its public debut, the site wagered this morning, up from approximately 5,000 in June 2009.
The Androlib directory covers multiple markets, including international ones, so not all apps… → Read More
App store analytics provider Distimo in its latest report once again focuses on in-app purchases across a variety of mobile application stores, Apple’s App Store in particular.
According to Distimo, the percentage of applications with in-app purchases is significantly higher in the App Store for iPad (10%) compared to that for the iPhone (2%). → Read More
Engadget and InformationWeek are reporting that AndroLib, which gathers all kinds of statistics on the Android Market, pegs the number of Android applications in the store at 100,000. My question is: where are they getting that from?
It’s true that AndroLib estimates the total number of downloads has now exceeded 1 billion apps, like we reported a couple of days ago when AndroLib launched a … → Read More
AndroLib, the website that enables you to browse and discover apps for your Android phone far better than the Android Market site does, has gotten a makeover and a bunch of new features today. Sure, it’s still not going to win any web design contests any time soon, but the revamp makes the site a ton more useful as far as I’m concerned.
AndroLib has also updated and expanded its statistics page… → Read More
AndroLib, the website that enables you to browse and discover apps for your Android phone far better than the Android Market site does, has gotten a makeover and a bunch of new features today. Sure, it’s still not going to win any web design contests any time soon, but the revamp makes the site a ton more useful as far as I’m concerned.
AndroLib has also updated and expanded its statistics page… → Read More
App store analytics provider Distimo last week published its report for June 2010, and zoomed in on the pricing of mobile applications across a variety of platforms once more.
The startup found that more than half of mobile apps are priced below or equal to $2 in Android Market, Apple’s App Store for iPhone and iPad, Nokia’s Ovi Store and Palm’s App Catalog.
The exceptions to the rule… → Read More
Considering the immense fragmentation that characterizes the mobile apps industry, it’s good to see decent research help us try and make sense of what’s going on in that particular part of the digital economy, one that is consistently growing in size and importance across the globe. Hence, I invite anyone with a vested interest in the mobile developer ecosystem to check out VisionMobile’s… → Read More
Next August, it will be 2 years since Google first announced Android Market, its mobile application store. First opened to users in October 2008, the company needed until February / March 2009 to add priced application support to Android Market for both developers and users in the US and the UK.
Today, supported locations for merchants now also include Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The… → Read More
We’re not 100% sure when it popped up first, but Google has seemingly updated the Android Market website. Don’t pee your pants just yet – they’ve apparently merely shuffled some things around along with other layout changes. Still no search, still no way to download apps OTA, still no statistics of any kind.
On the bright side, the interface is more straightforward than it used to be. You can see… → Read More
At the most recent Mobile World Congress, Google CEO Eric Schmidt revealed that the company’s partners are now selling over 60,000 Android handsets on a daily basis. With that kind of growth rate, it’s no wonder that the size of the Android Market is quickly increasing in its slipstream.
While Google doesn’t publicly show how many applications there are in Android Market, a Google representative… → Read More
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