Long overdue
One of the caveats we've most often encountered when people compare iPhones and Android phones is the store/market. While Apple has been a great pioneer of UI and industrial design, arguably its greatest achievement has been to create an substantial app developer ecosystem from scratch, and to redefine how software is sold and distributed on mobile phones.
Android also has a market, of course, but it generally loses out in comparison with the Apple app store, mainly on the grounds of usability. It's apparently (we don't have an iPhone) more user friendly and generally easier to use. This is something Google urgently needs to address if it hopes to keep grabbing market share and it recently announced some tweaks.
As they needed to, these tweaks focused on the user experience. The Android market client (the piece of software you use to access the market) has a new look, with the top of the screen now occupied by a ‘carousel' displaying promoted apps. Google talks about "improving discoverability", but this is clearly a prime new bit of advertising real estate.
Google has created two new sub-categories for widgets and live wallpaper, and will be adding other sub-categories shortly. There will also be ‘related content' listed on the app details page.
As previously announced, Android will be displaying a content rating system, with the stated aim of preventing children accessing ‘adult' apps, but which, of course, will have the opposite result. Right now purchasers can apply for a refund within 24 hours, but this has now been axed to 15 minutes, in apparent response to lobbying from developers.
One more change made to assist developers is best expressed in the blog's own words: "To make it easier for developers to distribute and manage their products, we will introduce support for device targeting based on screen sizes and densities, as well as on GL texture compression formats. We are also increasing the maximum size for .apk files on Market to 50MB, to better support richer games."
