Their recent fancy-pants redesign made everything prettier, slower, more cluttered and added almost no new functionality.
One of the devs had the nerve to post about how clever the resolution-independent swoosh at the top was. In my head I was yelling "stop fiddling with that and fix the frikkin search!"
The one thing I like about the new market is that it recovers from install hangs much better.
Often I get apps that download 100% and just sit there doing nothing (i.e. not moving into install phase). In the old market the only thing that would work was to cancel the the entire install and try again (i.e. re-download the app from scratch) until it worked. With the new market, leaving that app's page and coming back seems to deliver a reliable kick in the ass to the process when it's frozen. That alone is worth any annoyances. For everything else, there's appbrain.
Indeed, the app-store is very un-googly at the moment. Google made their name in search by providing the highest quality results, that's certainly not the case with the app-store.
Google has this idea in its head that the world should be html and web based. It wants a big server infra-structure and almost non-existent clients, because it IS a big server infrastructure. Google wants to be the platform that everyone is building on top, and take away the thick clients.
Now, unfortunately for them, things don't seem to be swinging that way. The chrome app store is a bust, chrome-os is not working and people by far prefer the native apple app store, and the native apple apps to the server based offerings.
However, google seems to not be paying attention to that. For their business, it would make so much sense if everything were running "in the cloud". That's what they would love, because they have the scale and opportunity to own this market.
So they cripple Android app-selling, such that people don't bet too heavily on 'owned' native apps. They are trying to buy time till cloud based apps become more prevalent - which frankly, is a really really long time from now.
Everything I've seen from Google is that they're agnostic on native vs web apps. They're happy as long as you're using Google services and looking at Google ads.
I believe there is an essential factor which isn't being articulated; the different demographics and psychology of android phone purchasers vs. iphone purchasers. I think Apple attracts a large portion of the "eager to spend money on technology" customer base. If you are someone who is eager to spend a lot of time playing with your phone, you are likely to buy an iphone. If you want smartphone functionality but are not inclined to make a hobby of your phone use, you are likely to buy an android phone. I love my android phone, but I am simply not interested in spending additional money on applications, and no matter how good app store search and discovery is and no matter how painless payment is, I can't imagine any phone application I would be interested in purchasing.
I think you're on to something, but I think "willingness to spend" might be more accurate than "eager to spend".
I don't think it has anything to do with making a hobby out of phone use, either. Plenty of android users are eager to tweak & tinker & install & play around with their phones. They're just tight-fisted with their money, that's all.
It seems to be a bit like linux users who — spoiled by the ability to freely download and install something that will do almost anything — wouldn't think to open their wallet to pay for software, no matter how good.
Edit: iOS isn't immune to this kind of user, either. Just check out app reviews complaining about having to pay 1/5th what people would spend on coffee for an app. But the existence of tightwads isn't as bad a problem as an absence of paying customers. Android is like The Cheapskate Channel: all tightwads, all the time.
I don't really recognize the "eager to spend money" category - I've bought a fair amount of apps for my iPhone and iPad (mostly games for the iPad at the prompting of my 12 year old son) - the main reason I end up buying stuff is because it is so easy to do and the prices are generally so low that they are almost literally "sweetie money".
Well, I imagine most Android users prefer GPL-licensed software, which is overwhelmingly also free as in beer. I know I do. CyanogenMod and FLOSS cover the majority of what I need from a phone-computer-thingy. For instance, I needed some GPS / navigation - OsmAnd and OpenGPS tracker. OsmAnd even allows download of vector data for entire countries and POI databases. Or, you need a timed photo taking application? rrTimeLapse does the job. In most cases, these applications are less cluttered and with saner UI than the flashier paid versions. I would pay, however, for certain applications - such as the excellent Thinking Space mind mapping software (which has a free ad-supported version with very lax limitations), or Titanium Backup. But in my part of Europe I can't pay for apps in the Market. Maybe they should look into fixing that.
the different demographics and psychology of android phone purchasers vs. iphone purchaser
This maybe was true 6 months ago. It isn't true now. Android buyers today are the mainstream, many of whom are paying as much for their handset, and as much on their contract, as the iPhone equivalent. They are competitive choices, and there is no longer any clear demographic difference between buyers.
You don't sell 300,000+ handsets a day targeting the geek demographic. My brother and his girlfriend, who I thought were the pinnacle of the iPhone demographic, I was recently shocked to find got a HTC Desire Z and a Galaxy S, despite their other household devices being an iPad and an iPod Touch. I had no part in that decision as I keep my evangelism in the online world.
As an Android buyer I've only purchased three applications in my history with the devices: WeatherBug Pro, a top-rated racing game that I then returned, and NFL's Game Center.
Am I cheap? Quite the opposite: My steam catalog is stuffed to the gills, and all of my music is legally owned (on top of a rdio subscription).
I want to spend money on Android apps. I want Angry Birds to have a pay version so I don't have to worry about my kids accidentally clicking on ads during play.
So why don't I spend more?
Not only is the market app terrible (the lack of decent heuristics being the biggest deficiency), as a long-time Android booster I will openly say that the majority of Android applications suck just as strongly. It's getting better, but in general it's still quite a gamble if you're getting something decent or not, and I can't imagine the 15 minute window has improved confidence levels.
It isn't always the app's fault, either. The racing game I mentioned seemed decent enough, but the constant garbage collection of the platform made it a pause-filled, unpleasant experience. This, of course, is one of the things that the slow-to-come 2.3 release (remember when the purpose of buying the Nexus One was supposedly fast releases?) aims to solve.
I actually felt guilty returning that app because it wasn't really the fault of the app's developers, but it made it unplayable.
The NFL application I only bought after actually seeing it on the NFL.com webpage. I had found it in the market search previously, but didn't buy it because there is no guarantee that "NFL Enterprises" is actually NFL Enterprises, or if it's some guy calling himself that. The Market also needs, optionally, something like Authenticode/vendor verification. I would not in a million years trust a purported bank application independently discovered on the Android market because there are zero guarantees.
To link myself, I talk about the market here - http://blog.yafla.com/Android_22_Engravings_and_the_Google_N..., the core takeaway being that the Market needs the ability to link a third-party rating authority. The biggest incentive for people to go through the buying process is the comfort that what they're getting is worth it. The current user review system offers no such confidence, usually offering up nothing but petty grievances and obvious shill accounts of the author's friends.
I'll take the Android model over the Apple model any day of the week, but there is an even better medium that would be ideal.
The marketplace is terrible for discovering new content. The absence of anything like "top selling new apps this week" means scrolling through pages and pages of the same old stuff.
So first it took over a year for us in Sweden to get paid apps.
Then it turns out that there is some bug which prevents "google for my domain"-users from buying Android-apps. Google Checkout with the same account works on a regular computer but not on my phone even though all other features work.
So I have to create yet another GMail address and associate my credit card with it just so I can buy apps which I've been to lazy to do.
Result: I've bought apps on my iPod touch which I never use but not once single a Android app even though I've used Android since the launch of the first dev-phone (2008).
as far as I can tell from the quotes, no curator is going to implemented, it seams a simple speculation from appleinsider. I might be very wrong but to me seems like a statement that google is strengthening his efforts started with the market itself to kick out out-of-term-of-service apps. Not only malicious, see apps like kongragate, that was considered an alternative android market and so was pulled; it is no more in the market, this doesn't mean you cannot install it your way, legally and easily.
Exactly! I'm not interested in Android precisely because I cannot sell nor buy Android apps from my country. There is also very little demand from clients (compared to iOS).
The problem for Google is that people from Romania have been able to buy and sell iOS apps since 2008 or so.
I do desktop Java apps on OSX so it would actually have been a smoother transition to do some Android coding on the side, but I learned Objective-C instead. Then I bought iOS gear for testing so I really don't see myself doing an Android app very soon or buying an Android device.
The International market seems to be a big problem: it's semi-amusing to read a new announcement and then look into the specifics to learn it is US-only or for a very limited subset of countries (the last ones I looked at were Amazon Kindle developer program, Amazon's new Android AppStore).
What limitations are there now? I live in the Czech republic and I believed that paid apps would not be available there, but in the last week, I was able to buy anything I wanted, via google checkout, without any problems. Perhaps I've missed something.
I've a friend whose company released a decent quality branded App on the Market recently. It was backed by a good amount of advertising/marketing and was pitched at the correct demographic.
but don't forget Google makes a lot of cash from advertising on free apps.
They own Admob and Google Mobile Ads so have a good chunk of the Android advertising market.
If an app gets purchased Google makes 30% of the sale, but with advertising they make between 15-35% for the lifetime of the app.
"Google also hopes to negotiate carrier billing agreements with scores of regional mobile providers, allowing users to buy apps and bill them to their mobile account."
Hopes...? Implementing this (and extending the coverage of paied apps) will completely change the market. No need to signup for any additional service and to have a credit card (in Europe/rest of the world not as diffused as in the US). If their objective is really to increase the sales, this should be the most important thing to do and that needs more people working on, not updating the market site (although changes are needed).
Sounds like an excuse for their lame marketplace which paid apps are not available in many countries. They do not make it easy for developers of paid apps. Why are they not happy? They are cornering app developers into free app+ advertising model (eg AngryBirds) and they should be very happy with the fat AdMob dollars.
They've had their chance here, fancy Android phone, most frustrating experience with a phone since trying out a Samsung about three years ago (I hear they've since cleaned up their act).
Absolutely terrible battery life, most frustrating user interface I've ever seen and a very rickety touch screen, next to impossible for me to type out a message with any speed (fat fingers I guess).
I've passed it on to my s.o. who is pretty happy with it, I'm back to a very cheap nokia. Buying an Iphone is not an option because I don't want to support apple's mobile department as long as they're not going to drop their weird app-store terms.
Never even got around to getting an android devkit before moving on.
All I want, and it's not too hard, is to separate free from paid apps, then apps from games, then be able to rank them by number of downloads or average rating.
For search, AppBrain seems to have that pretty nailed down. (Actually the AppBrain app is miles better than the crappy one from Google).
I'm surprised nobody is talking about Google moving to a curated model. I'm obviously comfortable with it, since I'm an iPhone owner; how do you Android people feel about it? That was supposed to be a major differentiator between the two marketplaces.
They aren't moving to a curated model, just beefing up the team that enforces the Terms and Conditions. Probably overdue given the growth of the market.
I would gladly buy apps if I had space on my phone. Thanks to the crippling 512mb on my Nexus One I get to spend every 3rd day cleaning my phone (despite the fact that half my apps are already running off SD.)
Google should give up and license others to run competing Android app stores. Then someone will figure how to do international app sales and curate Android apps.
Maybe someone from google is reading this: PLEASE ALLOW THE REST OF THE F*ING WORLD TO SELL APPS.this is killing me here in Romania. I have 3 cool, good looking games (angry birds competitors), just sitting and waiting.
That's one thing I've never got - the market has been out, what, years now and still they haven't bothered to sort out selling in other countries. What gives? Google is a giant multinational and even if there are legal issues, that's the reason they have a huge team of lawyers.
There is probably an opportunity cost because you aren't releasing the games as soon as possible. You might consider entering into some sort of deal with somebody that is able to publish your game or make an US (or whatever country is allowed) entity.
Of course, this is much too complicated/expensive than it would be if Google would do their part.
I'm also from Romania and this lack of support from Google is the reason I've only done iOS apps.
Hey, why not do the same thing that the guys of Angry Birds did putting ads on your games? I strongly suggest you to try this at least with one of them and see how it goes.
One thing that Apple has that Google doesn't seem to have is an affiliate program. Affiliates get %5 of app sales (or other iTunes sales) by driving traffic to the store. This provides a funding mechanism to incentivize people to make discovery tools.
I'm kinda impressed with the number of third party discovery tools for android, but I think that ecosystem would be more robust, and less of the burden on google, if they provided a monetization method for good app discovery.
Apple just partnered with LinkShare and other providers of the service. Seems Google could do the same thing.
[+] [-] andybak|15 years ago|reply
One of the devs had the nerve to post about how clever the resolution-independent swoosh at the top was. In my head I was yelling "stop fiddling with that and fix the frikkin search!"
[+] [-] fluidcruft|15 years ago|reply
Often I get apps that download 100% and just sit there doing nothing (i.e. not moving into install phase). In the old market the only thing that would work was to cancel the the entire install and try again (i.e. re-download the app from scratch) until it worked. With the new market, leaving that app's page and coming back seems to deliver a reliable kick in the ass to the process when it's frozen. That alone is worth any annoyances. For everything else, there's appbrain.
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markessien|15 years ago|reply
Now, unfortunately for them, things don't seem to be swinging that way. The chrome app store is a bust, chrome-os is not working and people by far prefer the native apple app store, and the native apple apps to the server based offerings.
However, google seems to not be paying attention to that. For their business, it would make so much sense if everything were running "in the cloud". That's what they would love, because they have the scale and opportunity to own this market.
So they cripple Android app-selling, such that people don't bet too heavily on 'owned' native apps. They are trying to buy time till cloud based apps become more prevalent - which frankly, is a really really long time from now.
[+] [-] orangecat|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mycroftiv|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pohl|15 years ago|reply
I don't think it has anything to do with making a hobby out of phone use, either. Plenty of android users are eager to tweak & tinker & install & play around with their phones. They're just tight-fisted with their money, that's all.
It seems to be a bit like linux users who — spoiled by the ability to freely download and install something that will do almost anything — wouldn't think to open their wallet to pay for software, no matter how good.
Edit: iOS isn't immune to this kind of user, either. Just check out app reviews complaining about having to pay 1/5th what people would spend on coffee for an app. But the existence of tightwads isn't as bad a problem as an absence of paying customers. Android is like The Cheapskate Channel: all tightwads, all the time.
[+] [-] arethuza|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thret|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zecg|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ergo98|15 years ago|reply
This maybe was true 6 months ago. It isn't true now. Android buyers today are the mainstream, many of whom are paying as much for their handset, and as much on their contract, as the iPhone equivalent. They are competitive choices, and there is no longer any clear demographic difference between buyers.
You don't sell 300,000+ handsets a day targeting the geek demographic. My brother and his girlfriend, who I thought were the pinnacle of the iPhone demographic, I was recently shocked to find got a HTC Desire Z and a Galaxy S, despite their other household devices being an iPad and an iPod Touch. I had no part in that decision as I keep my evangelism in the online world.
As an Android buyer I've only purchased three applications in my history with the devices: WeatherBug Pro, a top-rated racing game that I then returned, and NFL's Game Center.
Am I cheap? Quite the opposite: My steam catalog is stuffed to the gills, and all of my music is legally owned (on top of a rdio subscription).
I want to spend money on Android apps. I want Angry Birds to have a pay version so I don't have to worry about my kids accidentally clicking on ads during play.
So why don't I spend more?
Not only is the market app terrible (the lack of decent heuristics being the biggest deficiency), as a long-time Android booster I will openly say that the majority of Android applications suck just as strongly. It's getting better, but in general it's still quite a gamble if you're getting something decent or not, and I can't imagine the 15 minute window has improved confidence levels.
It isn't always the app's fault, either. The racing game I mentioned seemed decent enough, but the constant garbage collection of the platform made it a pause-filled, unpleasant experience. This, of course, is one of the things that the slow-to-come 2.3 release (remember when the purpose of buying the Nexus One was supposedly fast releases?) aims to solve.
I actually felt guilty returning that app because it wasn't really the fault of the app's developers, but it made it unplayable.
The NFL application I only bought after actually seeing it on the NFL.com webpage. I had found it in the market search previously, but didn't buy it because there is no guarantee that "NFL Enterprises" is actually NFL Enterprises, or if it's some guy calling himself that. The Market also needs, optionally, something like Authenticode/vendor verification. I would not in a million years trust a purported bank application independently discovered on the Android market because there are zero guarantees.
To link myself, I talk about the market here - http://blog.yafla.com/Android_22_Engravings_and_the_Google_N..., the core takeaway being that the Market needs the ability to link a third-party rating authority. The biggest incentive for people to go through the buying process is the comfort that what they're getting is worth it. The current user review system offers no such confidence, usually offering up nothing but petty grievances and obvious shill accounts of the author's friends.
I'll take the Android model over the Apple model any day of the week, but there is an even better medium that would be ideal.
[+] [-] danteembermage|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scrrr|15 years ago|reply
I'd like a feature where I surf on the web and select apps, and later that day I press a "Sync" button of sorts and get the apps.
[+] [-] robotron|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] apakatt|15 years ago|reply
So I have to create yet another GMail address and associate my credit card with it just so I can buy apps which I've been to lazy to do.
Result: I've bought apps on my iPod touch which I never use but not once single a Android app even though I've used Android since the launch of the first dev-phone (2008).
[+] [-] ebaysucks|15 years ago|reply
They tackle everything with algorithms, why not this problem?
[+] [-] scotu|15 years ago|reply
The last two paragraphs are full of fud, BTW
[+] [-] mopoke|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fierarul|15 years ago|reply
The problem for Google is that people from Romania have been able to buy and sell iOS apps since 2008 or so.
I do desktop Java apps on OSX so it would actually have been a smoother transition to do some Android coding on the side, but I learned Objective-C instead. Then I bought iOS gear for testing so I really don't see myself doing an Android app very soon or buying an Android device.
The International market seems to be a big problem: it's semi-amusing to read a new announcement and then look into the specifics to learn it is US-only or for a very limited subset of countries (the last ones I looked at were Amazon Kindle developer program, Amazon's new Android AppStore).
[+] [-] thingie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] terhechte|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lordmatty|15 years ago|reply
The total number of paid week one sales?
68
[+] [-] orangecat|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warrenmiller|15 years ago|reply
If an app gets purchased Google makes 30% of the sale, but with advertising they make between 15-35% for the lifetime of the app.
Whats that worth? about a billion a year or so... http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7772.html
[+] [-] drtse4|15 years ago|reply
Hopes...? Implementing this (and extending the coverage of paied apps) will completely change the market. No need to signup for any additional service and to have a credit card (in Europe/rest of the world not as diffused as in the US). If their objective is really to increase the sales, this should be the most important thing to do and that needs more people working on, not updating the market site (although changes are needed).
[+] [-] gaiusparx|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|15 years ago|reply
Absolutely terrible battery life, most frustrating user interface I've ever seen and a very rickety touch screen, next to impossible for me to type out a message with any speed (fat fingers I guess).
I've passed it on to my s.o. who is pretty happy with it, I'm back to a very cheap nokia. Buying an Iphone is not an option because I don't want to support apple's mobile department as long as they're not going to drop their weird app-store terms.
Never even got around to getting an android devkit before moving on.
[+] [-] andybak|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|15 years ago|reply
For search, AppBrain seems to have that pretty nailed down. (Actually the AppBrain app is miles better than the crappy one from Google).
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dminor|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mjangda|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stretchwithme|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] db42|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] micubogdan|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zrgiu|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antihero|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fierarul|15 years ago|reply
Of course, this is much too complicated/expensive than it would be if Google would do their part.
I'm also from Romania and this lack of support from Google is the reason I've only done iOS apps.
[+] [-] drtse4|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] leppie|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nika|15 years ago|reply
I'm kinda impressed with the number of third party discovery tools for android, but I think that ecosystem would be more robust, and less of the burden on google, if they provided a monetization method for good app discovery.
Apple just partnered with LinkShare and other providers of the service. Seems Google could do the same thing.