Google revamps Android Market for phones provide finner user interface

Google’s Android market, the online repository of apps for its mobile operating system, has undergone change lately. Google revealed a completely new user interface which according to Android developer, Eric Chu’s blog post, is designed to showcase the top apps and games in a better way. This latest user interface also engages users with the new and improved way of providing a quicker path for downloading or purchasing the online products.

Android Market

With the new and improved user interface, navigation becomes easy as the user needs to just slide left or right which will display a new tile based menu screen. The name and price of the app is located on the top of the screen. Apart from apps and games, the Android market will also have movies and books available for purchase by users.

Android market, which has over 200,000+ apps, was under fire from users and critics for a long time for its ordinary market setup which made it very difficult for both users and developers to locate the programs they wanted to find. In comparison, Apple has always promoted featured or popular apps in the iTunes app store, which is the app market for all Apple products. Google said at the I/O developer conference in May that Google had rolled out a more fluid and app-promoting user interface for the Market’s web portal, including categories such as “Top grossing, Trending” etc. Google now claims that the latest changes it has made to the app market for the mobile platform will appeal to the developers and help them generate more revenue. The new layout promises to make purchasing apps by removing unnecessary steps and clicking just two options. This will allow customers to buy apps in a much faster way.

As of now, developers tend to make an app for the iOS environment first and thereafter after removing any flaws and problems to suit the Android environment. However, Android co-founder Rich Miner believes that this trend will soon be a thing of the past. At the Mobilebeat technology conference in San Francisco, he expressed his opinion that the market has matured for Android.

Overall, the smartphone industry worldwide has grown at a rapid pace. In the US alone, 55% of all mobile phones purchased were smartphones in the past three months, says a Nielsen report. Currently, Android holds the lead for the most used mobile platform across the US in case of smartphones with a share of 38% according to ComScore. That is nearly 15% jump from February. Meanwhile Apple has toppled Research in Motion to conquer the second place sharing a 26.6% share, while RIM maintains a close third at 24.7% marketshare.

However, it has been said that if Android wants to stay ahead in the race, it will need to buck up its app ecosystem and should make it attractive enough for customers and developers. Loading the market with more and more apps does help up to a certain extent; however, if customers cannot find their desired app in a sea of apps, raising numbers of apps will cause more frustration and will result in a futile exercise. The new page for Android market will be gradually rolled out for users running Android 2.2 (Froyo) or better over the next few weeks.

Via: Wired