Good news for Android developers: Google has just posted a video of the upcoming refresh for its Android Market, the online store that allows users to download new software to their Android phones. And the changes are very promising.
According to the understated Android blog post, developers will be able to include screenshots, promotional icons, and descriptions for their applications. The UI for the store, which we caught a glimpse of in some leaked photos earlier this week, is also much more polished and user friendly. In other words, the store will now more closely resemble the iPhone’s App Store, which is not a bad thing.
Another important change is a bigger emphasis on paid applications, with a ‘Paid’ button prominently appearing at the top of the screen whenever you begin browsing though a category (paid apps are available using the current version of Android Market, but they’re much harder to find). Other additions to the store will include new sub-categories for themes, comics, health, and sports.
The news is timely. Three days ago we wrote about the lackluster sales figures that were coming out of the Android Market, which pale in comparision to those coming from the App Store — top developers for the iPhone are making thousands a day, while a top Android developer isn’t even breaking $100.
So basically they made it more like the iPhone App Store? How innovative.
What else they would have done? When we talk about marketplace, that’s the general information comes to our mind… isn’t it?
Great news for Android developers. A new change in Android phones from the Android markets of Google. The change in a bigger emphasis on paid applications, with a ‘Paid’ button prominently appearing at the top of the screen during browsing is quite interesting.
Eventhough there are many similarities between Android phone and iPhone,we have to wait and see the improvement of both!!
if it works, use it…
still, comparing sales between iphone and android, like the article does, needs to keep in mind the number of iphone devices out there, vs the android devices, and the length of time the respective marketplaces have been in operation…
Android is just in startups. Compared to Android’s market iPhone market will unsurprisingly show iPhone is huge. But actually Android initiative goes well, the changes are for sure in mobile market favorable to Android.
It actually looks pretty good
How does the Android OS compare with Blackberry’s from a developer point of view?
How long do you think it will take Android’s marketplace (once it launches) to exceed that of Blackberry’s?
that will depend on how soon we will see more android based devices out there, and what they will cost.
Great! Finally apps will have screenshots!
Wait– they launched an app store w/out screen shots of the apps?
I’m surprised they sold any apps at all…
Yeah, I really can’t believe it took this long to fix that.
Every app in the Android Market comes with a 24 hour return policy. One click and you get your money back. Try before you buy is better than any screenshot.
Unfortunately, the Android Market is still so far behind. All of our emphasis has been on iPhone because Android just can’t catch up yet. I’d give it another year before its really gotten its act together…
I think it looks great. I can’t wait to use it on my phone.
Anyone know if 1.6 is going to be supported on the HTC Dream(G1, AD1)?
I hope so.
No reason why it shouldn’t. It’s a pretty simple app update and should not be hardware specific.
I think the concern is with memory capacity — the HTC Dream comes with smaller ROM and RAM than the newer handsets.
Given that the Dream probably still accounts for the majority of Android handsets in the wild, I really doubt they’ll exclude it in this upgrade, but it will eventually happen.
google is run by geeks. They’re into figuring out algorithms than making things pretty…..so what do you expect? Making things user friendly or intuitive is not their forte.
“top developers for the iPhone are making thousands a day”… for Apple?
Whatever you say about the Android Market, at least it’s an open one, where you can release whatever you like without needing approval. And as an Android user, I’ve got about 250 apps installed on my device and not need to pay a penny for any of them, whereas the equivalent on the iDrone would probably have cost me hundreds of $$$.
To be honest though, this is a welcome upgrade to the Market app, but not really a huge step.
thats a thing i have noticed when it came to software related to apple products, where the equivalent for windows would often be gratis (free as in beer), the ones for osx would have some kind of shareware cost attached to it.
quick guess is that more choice (just have a look at the numbers on downloads.com or similar) results in the price being forced down, while being a smaller market, one can get away with setting a higher price.
also, the dev tools for android is free, right? and your not paying a yearly sum to keep a marketplace presence, right? and given its java base, one can develop on any platform (iirc, to develop for iphone one need to use a mac).
end result, android is more open to the concept of gratis…
Though they did pull the tether for root apps from the market, not like that stopped anyone savvy enough to root.
the average consumer doesn’t care if it’s open source or not. They just want it to work!! Android will only become successful if it focuses on the latter. Otherwise it will just be like linux on the desktop.
I wanted to post a comment on the story Why TechCrunch Is Not Coming to Brazil After All but the page won’t fully load… looks like the stream drops dead before the comment gui loads at the bottom of the page. other times I reload the page and all I get is a blank page. anyway, the comment I wanted to leave is:
damn… Brazil’s visa system is almost as messed up as American health care.
if someone could move the comment over to the appropriate article when things start working again, I’d appreciate it.
Have to ask: Is that comment worth moving over?
Harry “sorry, couldn’t resist” Wang
WOW It’s about time!
Its actually looks great!!
I’ve developed for Android. It’s alright, debug tools are adaquate, emulator works. Learned the API and developed a prototype of a pretty simple app in about a week. Hardest part was getting the right version of Eclipse to work with their eclipse-plugin.
Blackberry dev environment seems to be more mature though.
Don, what version of Eclipse did you use? Do you still have the download like?
Because the eclipse-plugin doesnt work at all for me.
download link*
you need to use ganymede, which isn’t the latest version.
http://www.ecli...e.org/ganymede/
thanks, works great
Galileo also works, I’m developing on it.
In other news, Android still stutters when scrolling. Soooooo ugly.
enjoy your iphone
Oh, and the current market app looks like it was written by a fifteen year old experimenting with a list control’s horizontal/vertical scrolling feature for the first time.
Seriously, how that version of market got out the door is a mystery.
Oh, and what design genius thought it’d be great to put a big ugly analog clock on the main screen?
It says: Welcome to android, you’ve paid hundreds of dollars for an advanced piece of technology, only to have to stare at a hard-to-read, god-awful looking ANALOG CLOCK from the 1950’s.
And check out our groovy slacks while you’re at it. All the flappers are wearing them y’know.
Seriously, whoever made that call should not be in charge of UI.
hard to read?
sure, its not to the second accurate, but i wear a analog clock each day.
its readability, or lack of such, comes mostly from habit, imo…
Well, its certainly not an improvement on “12:00″, so its just there to look pretty. And it doesn’t look pretty, imo, it looks dated and unimaginative.
And when you’re up against the iphone, dated and unimaginative probably won’t cut it.
Maybe the clock isn’t horrible, but, at least in my eyes, at best it seems more like “filler” than a feature. Which could be said for lots of other things about the phone.
I generally don’t have much good to say about the phone except I can develop on it without layingn out the money for a mac, which is all that’s stopping me from developing for the iphone.
Nice they even have the Apple style reflection! It is an improvement but still looks pretty beta. You get the feeling that it was rushed to market?
Tomorrows headline: apple suing google for patent infringment.
where is the innovation here,
Catch up by copying. Can’t someone else be a little creative these days.
The irony! you just copied the very first comment on this thread.
If you want irony,
Just think, if it wasn’t for Apple copying the Linux kernel and modding it for there new OS, there wouldn’t be too many ways to add those apps to the idrones.
Then to think of it. Is google copying apple with the market or is it the other way around.
Go figure.
I loved apple, especially with OS 6~7. click save, click save.
before any one knocks Linux, look at your base system.
The Irony of it all.
BTW, most Android owners didn’t want an over-sized, overpriced, brick in our hands that says “hey, look at me… I fit in to the status quo now”.
For an OS that is in it’s infancy and devices that are of the same….
Android is years ahead of apple.
Just had to say.
We have an iPhone application, but Android provided us two key capabilities that made our WhitePages Caller ID application possible: 1) an open environment with access to the incoming call history (iPhone does not) 2) run multiple apps at once so the user can leave the app on at all times.
Thus, Android has allowed us to be more creative.
Although the enabled base is smaller then iPhone, the uptake on our trial and premium versions has more paid for the development — and now there will be even more devices in market.
Finally it sure was nice to upload our first version of the app at 1am and start to watch the customer feedback come in 30 minutes later.
@knakao
I struggle to see any difference between this and the app store, except its about 12 months out of date and i’m sure the app store will have some major overhaul in the next few months.
Memo to Google: get a decent graphic designer, it still looks like it was designed as a school project, and get someone to do your voiceovers without some weird scandinavian-american accent that makes him sound like a refugeek from the Pirate Bay.
Fuck yeah dudes, i was updating some apps and BAM, i see a feature to add screenshots. pretty cool!