Before the unified Play branding, Google had the Android Market, Google Music, and Google eBookstore. Google decided to merge and rebrand its individual digital offerings into the Play Store in March of 2012.
The Play Store is now the default place to purchase apps, movies & television, music, books, and news subscriptions for all Android devices. The latter four offerings having their individual Android and iOS apps to watch, listen, and read purchased content. Most content can also be accessed through the web.
In April of 2016, the suite of icons were redesigned in a similar style to provide a consistent look across all devices and the web.
Google Play’s Music All Access service – Google’s rather clumsily-named equivalent to Spotify – has now been rolled out to Europe, initially to nine countries.
The service, launched in the USA in May and later extended to Australia and New Zealand, is now available in Austria, Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain and the United Kingdom … Expand Expanding Close
Following Google’s release of an official AdSense Android app on Google Play last week, today the company has released an iOS version of the app. Much like the Android version, this is the first official AdSense client Google has released for the platform, and brings competition for some of the free and paid third-party clients already on the App Store. The app also provides much of the same functionality as the Android app, allowing users to access most reporting features available through the Adsense website, as well as payment alerts (which unfortunately can’t be dismissed at this point).
The AdSense app provides an easy way to access key data from your AdSense account. Access reporting features anywhere, directly from your iPhone. The first version of the app gives you access to: the key earnings information, top custom and URL channels, ad units and sites reports, payment alerts.
According to data from App Annie’s latest download and revenue report, Google Play for the first time surpassed the App Store in app downloads during the second quarter of 2013. While Google was able to move past Apple with about 10 percent more downloads during the three month period, the report notes the App Store brought in nearly 2.3x the amount of revenue.
App Annie says that Google Play’s growth was driven by emerging markets including Brazil, India, and Russia, and while the App Store still leads by revenue, Google Play closed the gap slightly compared to last quarter and years past.
Google Play saw Brazil climb two spots to join India and Russia as another emerging market in the top 5 countries by downloads for Q2 2013…The United States, Japan and United Kingdom remained the leaders in the iOS App Store when looking at revenue generation, and Australia climbed to #4 after a strong Q2. iOS App Store revenue was driven primarily by the United States and Japan, which combined to account for about half of the total iOS App Store revenue in Q2.
App Annie’s report also includes its Games Index tracking mobile games on iOS and Android, which now account for around 40 percent of all downloads on both platforms. During Q2, Gameloft’s Despicable Me: Minion Rush grabbed the top spot for most downloaded iOS game, while publisher Tiny Piece took the honor on Google Play.
As for non-gaming apps, Vine increased by three positions to become the most downloaded app during the quarter on iOS, followed closely by YouTube, Snapchat, and Instagram. Expand Expanding Close
IMBb has released a big update today to its mobile apps, adding the the ability to purchase movie tickets directly from within the app and much more. The feature is initially only available to users in the U.S. and can be accessed directly through a “Showtimes & Tickets” section on listings for movies currently in theatres.
The updated Android app also includes the ability movies and TV shows by, for example, genre and format:
What’s New
What’s in this version:
·Movie tickets: You can now conveniently purchase movie tickets via the IMDb app. Currently available in the U.S. only.
·Your Watchlist: Now you can filter and sort the movies and TV shows on your Watchlist. Looking for horror movies currently in theaters, or comedies available on DVD/Blu-ray? Your Watchlist can help you zoom in on what you want to watch, where you want to watch it.
·We’ve made performance improvements to help pages scroll more smoothly and responsively, and fixed some bugs.
Last November, Rovio introduced a new Angry Birds Star Wars game that brought iconic Star Wars locations and characters from the movies into the Angry Birds gameplay universe. Today the developer is teasing what looks to be an entirely new Star Wars themed Angry Birds game. While Rovio’s initial tweet only mentioned a “Big new game announcement” coming this Monday, it later confirmed on its blog that the announcement will be for “a brand new game” with “the biggest character line-up ever, awesome new powers, and maybe even a few surprises!”
On top of the teaser, Rovio is also making Angry Birds Star Wars available for free today for a limited time.
We don’t get any other details, but Rovio did include the image above hinting the game might be inspired by Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace:
Business Insider reports that Google is renegotiating its Play Store revenue share arrangements in Korea, and is likely doing the same in other markets, with a view to increasing it’s profits from the app store to half a billion dollars next year.
Here’s how Google’s revenue currently works, according to [analyst firm] Macquarie: Google gives 70% of an app’s revenue to the developer. It gives 25% of that revenue to the carrier. It keeps just 5% for itself.
Jung says Google wants to keep 15% of app store revenue, and give the rest to the carrier.
Half a billion is relatively small-beer to Google, but BI speculates that the move could be designed to make the Android project – widely believed to be a break-even endeavour at best for Google – profitable.
Twitter’s Vine has pushed out an update for its Android app today that brings the video app to parity with its iOS counterpart. The update adds front-facing camera support as well as a new upload manager for all compatible devices.
In addition to these two new features, Vine for Android has also gotten some all-around speed improvements and support for more Android devices, although Twitter wouldn’t explicitly specify which ones.
The full Vine 1.2.0 for Android changelog is as follows:
Front-facing camera.
New upload manager for unsubmitted posts.
Improvements to settings.
Improvements to camera loading time and support for more devices.
Speed improvements overall.
Bug fixes and UI improvements.
You can download the new version now directly from Google Play.
Facebook announced today that it’s starting a beta program for its Android apps that will allow users to sign up to test and provide feedback on the latest build of the app before its released to the public.
Facebook is the most-downloaded app in the Play Store, so we need to make sure it works for everyone, no matter their amount of RAM, network conditions, or version of Android they might be using. Factors like data costs and network speeds are especially important to users, and we want to make sure we’re always optimizing their experiences. With so many use cases to solve, testing becomes crucial to ensuring positive, consistent experiences across Android.
While Facebook noted that it has been providing a beta of its Android apps to partners such as Qualcomm, HTC, Ericsson, Sony, Huawei and MediaTek over the last six months, starting today all users can now sign up to become beta testers.
According to a report from Nikkei (via Reuters), Microsoft has signed up Japan-based game developer Klab Inc to bring some of its console and PC games to the iPhone and Android devices. There aren’t many other details, but the report claims Microsoft’s next title to arrive on smartphones will be a free-to-play version of Age of the Empires:
Microsoft’s “Age of the Empires” will be available as a free-to-play game worldwide on smartphones by the end of the fiscal year 2013 and other titles will follow, the report said.
KLab is behind a few titles already on the App Store and Google Play, including Arcadia, Gigabot Wars, Eternal Uprising, and Lord of the Dragons.
It actually wouldn’t be the first game that Microsoft has published for smartphones as it recently brought its previously Windows Phone only title “Tentacles: Enter the Dolphin” to the App Store for both iPhone and iPad.
Google announced today on Google+ that a new partnership with Starbucks will provide free WiFi and the ability for customers at Starbucks locations to stream unlimited songs, radio and more from Google’s recently launched AllAccess music service. Apple has of course offered similar promotions and continues to offer free iTunes content and more through Starbucks locations. Back in 2007 it announced a partnership with Starbucks in the US to offer a free iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, and it continues to offer its free app and song of the week picks through physical cards in store and through mobile apps.
Google’s new streaming music service is still limited to the US, so we’re assuming the new promotion is also limited to Starbucks locations within the country. Last we heard an iOS app for the service would be arriving sometime this month. Expand Expanding Close
Some iOS users might not be too happy about the big design changes in iOS 7, but Android users are already finding ways to get a few of the new features on their non-Apple phones. The image above shows a set of icons created by one Android user to mimic the new home screen icons on iOS 7 (via Cnet). Android users can grab the icons through a download on Dropbox and use Nova Launcher or other home screen replacement apps.
Android users can grab the icons through a download on Dropbox and use Nova Launcher or other home screen replacement apps to get Apple’s controversial new look on their Android device now.
That new 3D parallax effect Apple showed off for iOS 7? Android users have also found a way to get a similar 3D effect, as pointed out by AndroidCommunity in the video below:
The 3D Image Live Wallpaper seen in the video above has been on Google Play since November, but you’ll have to judge for yourself to see if it compares to the new parallax feature in iOS 7.
Verizon announced today that its Verizon FiOS app, previously only available for iOS devices, is now available for Android users through an app on Google Play. Like the iOS version, the free Verizon FiOS Mobile Android app brings live streaming to subscribers as well as a ton of on-demand content. The app will allow you to “watch up to 75 channels of Live TV at home, manage your DVRs remotely as well as browse and watch FiOS video-on-demand (VOD) anywhere you want“:
• Watch select live streaming TV channels from your device, anywhere in your home (* requires both FiOS TV and FiOS Internet service, as well as subscription to any of the channels you wish to watch)
• Access your Flex View content from anywhere, and browse over 40,000 titles in the Flex View On Demand library for great movie deals and exciting new TV programs
• Manage your DVR recordings, check the status of your DVR, and schedule new recordings from anywhere (* requires a DVR)
• Use your mobile or tablet device as a remote control while in your home (*requires an HD set-top box)
Warner Bros has revealed the Man of Steel game for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch and Android smartphones and tablets. The game will be available from June 14, 2013 on the App Store, Google Play and Amazon Appstore for Android. We’ll keep you updated
We already knew a new white version of the Nexus 4 would begin rolling out after LG confirmed as much earlier this week. It first launched in Hong Kong on Wednesday, and today the device has finally hit both Google Play and T-Mobile’s online store for customers in the US.
You can grab the device now in both 16GB ($349) and 8GB ($299) variants from Google Play. Google is also offering a free white bumper with your purchase.
Google announced today on its Enterprise blog that it’s rolling out a new app for Google Apps administrators that allows them to access the Admin console directly from an Android device. With the new Google Admin app for Android users will have access to the majority of basic features including “quickly adding or suspending users, resetting passwords, managing group memberships, and directly calling or emailing specific users.”
When Google unveiled its brand new $9.99/month “All Access” Google Play music streaming service earlier this month at its I/O keynote, we quickly learned that the service would not be coming to iOS initially. Google didn’t get into why, but today developers of the popular gMusic iOS app has unofficially brought support for the service to iPhone and iPad.
The app previously acted as client for songs stored in your Google Music library, but with an update to version 6.0 today the All Access subscription service is now officially available to iOS users. The changelog on iTunes also lists the ability to “Create/play Radio Stations” and “Search, listen, and add music to your library from inside the app.”
As for why Google didn’t make it’s own All Access app for iOS, we’ve heard from sources close to the situation that Google wants to submit an app but is currently in a holding pattern with Apple regarding what they will accept.
Adam Bell (@b3ll), a well-known developer for many software platforms, has figured out a way to route all notifications from an iOS device through Google Glass. The implementation, even in its early stage, seems to work quite well. Bell notes that all notifications, such as iMessages and Tweets automatically are shown via the Google Glass interface. Video and more details below:
The app’s UI has been overhauled and now displays your Drive files in a familiar grid style view:
You can swipe between files to see large previews that let you quickly review and discover the information you’re looking for. And if you want to keep some Drive files on your Android device, you’ll now be able to “download a copy” from the actions menu inside settings.
Another big update included in the latest version of Drive for Android is the ability to ‘scan’ and store physical documents as PDFs. The new scan option will allow users to snap photos of documents and save them within Drive as a PDF. Thanks to Optical Character Recognition, you’ll also be able to search for the scanned docs using keywords.
The update includes a number of other improvements as well including the ability to download a copy of your files in Drive your device’s local storage, improvements to editing features in Google Sheets, and much more: Expand Expanding Close
The updated app, which should be hitting Google Play some time today, will include a number of new photo editing features including the new Auto Awesome effects, auto backup for photos, and other photo editing tools from Snapseed:
Auto Backup, to safely and privately store your photos as you snap them
Auto Highlight, to browse a selection of top shots from every set of photos you add
Auto Enhance, to make subtle improvements to the people and places in your images, automatically
Auto Awesome, to create fun new versions of your pictures (like animations and panoramas) based on the photos in your library
The updated Google+ for Android app will also offer improved location sharing with a new Locations section that lets you view your friends’ current locations on a map.
Lastly, after updating you’ll have the ability to access Google’s new intelligent related hashtags feature:
Samsung has proven almost effortlessly that the 5-inch smartphone has its place in the hands of the masses as it is on track to selling 10 million handsets in its first month, The Korea Times reports.
The company has plenty of room for sales to exponentially grow upward, possibly past their own already high expectations, as the smartphone that has taken the Android world by storm has yet to actually launch on Verizon in the States.
Samsung’s co-CEO Shin John-Kyun says the company expects the Galaxy S4 to be the fastest selling smartphone in the company’s history.
“We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week. It is selling much faster than the previous model S3,” Samsung Electronics co-CEO Shin Jong-Kyun told reporters at an industry forum in Seoul, Thursday.
Samsung has received criticism for the amount of storage its flagship Galaxy S4 smartphone allows users to access out of the box, but CNET reports that Samsung may be considering ways it could optimize the operating system and free up more space for users.
Samsung’s Galaxy S4 smartphone runs a custom variant of Android, which allows the company to include features not on other Android phones including Google’s own Nexus phones, but the feature-heavy OS comes at the cost of using half the capacity on a 16GB device.
Following its I/O keynote address today, Google just announced on its commerce blog that it will soon be integrating Google Wallet features into Gmail to allow users to send and receive money. The feature will be available to those with a Google Wallet account and will initially be available to users 18 and older in the US:
Google Wallet is now integrated with Gmail, so you can quickly and securely send money to friends and family directly within Gmail — even if they don’t have a Gmail address. It’s free to send money if your bank account is linked to Google Wallet or using your Google Wallet balance, and low fees apply to send money using your linked credit or debit card.
Google will be adding a new $ icon next to the paperclip icon for attachements that will allow users to “attach money” to messages in Gmail by simply entering the amount and clicking send.
Google noted that the feature will first only be available on the desktop, but that users can also send money through wallet.google.com on mobile devices.
Look for the feature to start rolling out in the coming weeks but earlier access will be granted to those that receive money from others using the feature. You can learn more about sending money with Gmail here.
Google today announced today that Google’s new hangouts service/experience would be available in Gmail:
What does this mean for your Gmail? You now have the option to switch from the current version of chat to Hangouts. Simply click “Try it out” next to your chat list to switch to Hangouts and give your chat an instant facelift (literally!). You’ll now see the profile photos in the order of your most recent conversations. With Hangouts, you’ll also be able to quickly send messages, have video calls with up to ten people at once, and share photos. You can start a conversation with just one friend or even a whole group.
Google today announced that it is revamping the Google voice search feature available in Chrome. While users have always been able to search with their voice through Chrome, Google is attempting to make the service work more like it does through Google Search apps and Google Now on mobile devices.
Chrome will now include “conversational search” with a brand new interface that doesn’t require users to click in order to search with their voice. Like on mobile devices with Google Now, users will now be able to simple say “Google” in order to activate voice search.
Today, we previewed what this conversational experience will look like in Chrome on your desktops and laptops. Soon, you’ll be able to just say, hands-free, “OK Google, will it be sunny in Santa Cruz this weekend?” and get a spoken answer. Then, you’ll be able to continue the conversation and just follow up with “how far is it from here?” if you care about the drive or “how about Monterey?” if you want to check weather somewhere else, and get Google to tell you the answer.
The new interface, as pictured above from Google’s demo of the feature, is much like the voice search interface for Google Now on Android devices.
While not a full blown Google Now experience yet, the feature will allow users to pull up flight information, email, calendar entries and more by taking advantage of Gmail field trial features that some users have already opted in to try.
The new feature will be coming to Macs and PCs through Chrome soon.
Google also briefly showed off some new content coming to Google Now including new cards for Reminders, Music Albums, TV Shows, Books, Public Transit, and Video games rolling out today: Expand Expanding Close
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