Google held a session today at I/O 2013 about how to make money on Android, and in the initial few minutes it shared some updated stats around Google Play revenues and how those are progressing. Not surprisingly, the big growth is coming with in-app purchases, though Google’s recently launched subscription model is also making headway. → Read More
Google I/O, the company’s sixth annual developer conference, got officially underway in San Francisco on Wednesday, and it was an eventful day. It took the company every minute of its epic three-hour keynote to unfurl a laundry list of announcements and updates, seemingly across every product category in its arsenal — from Android, Chrome and Search to Maps, Google+ and Hangouts — each with a… → Read More
At its I/O developer conference, Google just announced its new Play Games Services API, a new API that allows game developers to save game states and sync them between different machines. This service will be available for Android and iOS developers. The API will also include the usual achievements, leaderboards and multiplayer services that developers have come to expect from similar services. → Read More
Way back in March of 2010, Swype launched a super private Beta of its then totally mind-blowing swipe-to-type Android keyboard. While they’ve since shipped it out-of-the-box on dozens of handsets, opened the Beta to pretty much anyone, and sold for $100M, they’ve never gotten around to ditching that Beta tag — until today.
This morning, Swype will hit the Google Play store for the first time. → Read More
Research firm Forrester has put out a new report exploring best practices for developers trying to get their apps noticed. Its findings include that word of mouth and social discovery play a key role in new apps finding loyal users, at least in Europe. The research also underlines the dominant role that mainline app stores continue to play in app discovery on the iOS and Android platforms. → Read More
Today, Microsoft has leveled more accusations about Google’s practices by way of its “Scroogled” campaigns. This time, the complaints are about how Google handles users’ data when they purchase an application from Google Play. Previous “Scroogled” campaigns have targeted both Gmail and search over ads and privacy. In the two videos below, Microsoft uses… → Read More
Google has made a small but telling change to how it reports Android activation data for the benefit of its developer community, switching from reporting device activation based on a general or background check-in to its activation servers to — starting this month — counting only those devices where a user visits its Play Store. → Read More
Google’s been awfully busy these past few weeks, but it seems that between sunsetting Reader (and pissing off most of the internet in the process) and rolling out new services like Google Keep, the company has been working on a redesigned version of the Google Play Store for Android. That’s what the folks at Droid-Life claim, anyway — they appear to have obtained and installed the unreleased 4.0… → Read More
Google has just announced via its official blog that Google Play is officially one year old today. The actual marketplace itself is older than that, with the Android Market debuting in 2008, but it has been a year since Google changed the store’s branding to reflect its broader purpose, which extends to media and use on platform besides its mobile OS. Google rehashed some of its previous… → Read More
YouTube plans to launch a music subscription service later this year, to allow people to listen to tracks online, and to possibly cut out the ads that precede each video for subscribers, according to Fortune. The largest storehouse of streaming video, YouTube relies on selling banner ads on the site and running short clips before each video, giving a cut back to record companies. YouTube has… → Read More
Rumors from an “extremely reliable source” speaking to 9t05Google have suggested Google will soon start to operate its own physical retail stores starting as soon as the 2013 holiday season in the U.S. Brick-and-mortar shops from an Internet search company? Sounds like a stretch, but the Goog is breaking out of its search box big time, and recent additions to the Nexus line are proving it has a… → Read More
Google recently changed its payout schedule for Android app developers, moving from a window which saw developers paid two days after the month ends, to a new window where the payout date is 15 days after the month’s end. The move will allow Google to hold onto payments longer, which benefits the company of course. But when Google informed developers of the change, it cited “new forms of payment”… → Read More
Google yesterday started to offer the Nexus 4 once again in the Google Play stores in the U.S., Canada and Germany, and today it’s started to roll it out to the rest of the markets where it quickly went out of stock last year. Users can now order the devices in the UK, France, Spain and Australia, with shipping times of around 1-2 weeks, although more exact times might be given at checkout. → Read More
Google today launched the first deal in what will be a series of freebies and discounts on mobile apps, books, TV, music and movies, now being made available to Android users via Google Play. The “surprise calendar countdown,” as the giveaway program is being called, kicks off with a $35 credit for Hotel Tonight. → Read More
Its name may not be familiar, but Zedge has become one of the most popular Android apps out there. Offering personalized content and game discovery along with free ringtones and wallpaper, the app currently sits in the ninth spot among Google Play’s free apps, placing it between familiar names, like Netflix and Twitter. Over the last three years, Zedge has seen over 50 million installs on Android… → Read More
A little sweetening of the deal for would-be Android holiday tablet and smartphone and buyers in one part of the world: today Google announced that it is expanding its Magazines section of Google Play apps to the UK. Some Android users started to notice the store appearing yesterday; today is the formal launch where it will be available to everyone. → Read More
Mobile carrier billing company Bango continues its hot streak of signing up big name partners today, thanks to a new arrangement with Google to bring carrier billing to Google Play, beginning in Australia. Bango provides carrier billing services to Facebook in the UK, France and Germany, and also partners with RIM for BlackBerry App world billing. Earlier this year, it announced deals to work with… → Read More
Ninety-nine cents here, a buck-ninety-nine there — that’s what were used to spending when Apple introduced the App Store after the iPhone was launched. It was probably one of the most genius software and developer coups in the history of mobile computing. I mean that. By creating the App Store, Apple created thousands, and perhaps millions, of jobs and an all-new form of entertainment and… → Read More
Geolocation is very important for consumers these days, it’s a technology that can be used in almost any application you can think of. Whether you want to shop, do volunteer work or meet new people, having a great Maps integration is key for Android developers.
Today, Google launched an update to its Maps API so that developers can better integrate them into the applications that they’re… → Read More
According to a new report from mobile app analytics firm App Annie, Google’s Play software store is gaining on rival Apple’s iOS app marketplace. The revenue gulf between the two stores is often cited as a reason why Apple is able to attract more top-tier developers and quality titles, so a lessening of the gap between the two in that respect is particularly significant. → Read More
When you visit a review on Google Play for an app, book, song or movie, you won’t have to worry as much about whether someone is sheepishly hiding behind a computer firing off nasty words, as Google has now flipped on the switch to display your Google+ name and profile picture with all reviews you add to the store.
I’m not so sure this is the best thing in the world, 100%, as you don’t have an… → Read More
Google has reached a new arrangement with European music publishing entities which will give it access to 5.5 million tracks spanning 35 countries, including artists like Lady Gaga and Rihanna. The arrangement was made with Armonia, one of the largest alliances of music publishers in the world. This should help Google expand the availability of its music content offerings. → Read More
Google shows off what happens when you control both a social network and a mobile software platform, thanks to a new feature of Google+ spotted by The Next Web today that allows users to share and purchase Android apps directly from the Google+ feed. It’s a small tweak, but a big one in terms of unlocking the power of Google’s social networking efforts and translating that to a more frictionless… → Read More
Google quietly announced the addition of an online magazine reader this week, which works within its Google Play media and applications store. The Magazines section of Google Play allows you to search for, purchase, subscribe to, and now, read magazines right in the Chrome web browser. Magazines can be purchased individually or on a subscription basis via an Android phone, tablet or the web (for… → Read More
Google previewed the new version of the developer console for its Google Play app and media store at its annual I/O conference in June. The new version has been in private beta ever since, but as of today all developers can opt-in to the new console. → Read More
Boingo just announced that Google Play is now sponsoring free Wi-Fi at 4,000 hotspots, including a number of major airports, including New York’s JFK, Chicago’s O’Hare and Sea-Tac in Seattle, as well as in Manhattan subway stations and “thousands of hotels, shopping malls, cafés and recreational areas.” This free service is scheduled to last through September, but it’s worth noting that Google… → Read More
It’s been a week since the first images of Google’s Play Store gift cards first started making the rounds, and the search giant has finally gotten around to confirming their existence.
First thing’s first — the $10 and $25 denominations spotted last Tuesday are indeed the real deal, and they’re joined by a $50 card that’s better geared toward facilitating bigger purchases like e-books and… → Read More
Android fans have been clamoring for Google Play (née Android Market) gift cards for years now, and it seems that the wait is nearly over. Less than a day after the folks at AndroidPolice discovered that the Google Play Android app was quietly updated with support for gift cards, AndroidCentral has come across the first images of those cards in the wild.
There’s really not much to say about… → Read More
Looks like Google Play is growing up, combing its hair and trying to move away from its Wild West image: Android’s app store team has sent out a letter to its tens of thousands of developers informing them that it is making several changes to tighten its developer app policies. Areas that are covered include naming apps, app icons, payments, privacy, spam and advertising — effectively, a set of… → Read More
All Googled out yet? I can’t blame you if you are, but it seems that the company has been even busier than their two hour press conference let on.
In addition to pushing the Android version of their Chrome browser out of beta, Google has also added some new app controls to the “My Android Apps” section of the Google Play Store. → Read More
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