Android Market changes

Now that Amazon has opened up their own App Store, Google has *FINALLY* added statistics to their own developer tools. The statistics only go back to Dec 21, 2010 but it's better than nothing. Now I can see the Android versions that my user base is composed of, the most popular devices, and countries that the users  are from and how my percentages compare to the Android Market averages.

Android Market News

Today, Google announced changes to the Android Market to provide a web interface to the marketplace and Over The Air installation to Android devices. After looking at the new web interface to the marketplace I'm pleased with it's appearance and responsiveness however I can't log into the Market to test OTA application installation. Hopefully Google will get that fixed later today and I'll get a chance to test it. Still no changes to the Developer Console though.

Some of the announced API changes for Honeycomb look interesting, however since there are no Honeycomb devices there's little point to getting to worked up and re-writing any apps just yet. Fragments look very interesting though.

Makes me wish that Android development followed a more BSD-style development model with Stable and Current branches.

Market Fluctuations

Today Google announced that developers from more countries can sign up for Google Checkout Merchant accounts to sell apps on the Android Market. This is exciting as I have thus far been entertaining alternative methods of monetization such as advertising, referrals and donations.

This also raises new questions such as whether or not to have a free "demo" version of apps, a free ad supported version and what features from the pay version should be present in the free versions.

3 stars - "Really needs A exit close app button."

What's with the one guy that goes through the Android Market and rates every app as 3 stars - "Really needs A exit close app button"? None of the apps on Android need an exit button. It's a waste of screen space and Google designed Android's multitasking not to require that the app be closed manually.

Don't take my word for it. Go to the source. This Radioactive Yak article explains it quite nicely. The author's an Android Developer Advocate employed by Google in case you failed to notice that in his About Me tab.

There shall never be a button named "Exit" wasting valuable screen real estate in any of my Android apps. Don't bother asking for one.  Press the Home key instead.

Android Market Developer Console

It would be great if the Android Developer Concole:

• was updated in real-time
• generated graphs for downloads/active installs/crash reports/ratings
• if crash reports included the Android version the report came from
• what percentage of installs are on what type of device