Android Market
Android Market is the online software store developed by Google for Android devices. An application program (app) called Market is preinstalled on most Android devices and allows users to browse and download apps published by third party developers, hosted on Android Market. As of October 2011 there were more than 300,000 apps available for android, and the expected number of application downloading from the Android Market as of December 2011 exceeded 10 billion. The operating system itself is installed on 130 million total devices.
Google announced the Android Market on August 28, 2008, and made it available to users on 22 October 2008. They introduced and support for paid applications on 13 February 2009 for US and UK developers, with additional support for 29 countries on 30 September 2010.
Only devices that observe Google’s compatibility requirements are allowed to preinstall Google’s closed-source Android Market app and access the Market. The Market filters the list of applications presented by the Market app to those that are compatible with the user’s device, and developers may control their applications to particular carriers or countries for business reasons.
In December 2010 Google has added a content filtering to Android Market and reduced the purchase refund window from 24–48 hours to 15 minutes. In February 2011 Google introduced a web client that supply access to Android Market through PC. Apps requested through the Android Market web page are downloaded and installed on a registered Android device.
Google’s Erich Chu said the purpose of this change was to rendering users to as many apps as possible in may 2011 Google added a new app files to the Android Market, including Top Grossing” apps, “Top Developers”, “Trending” apps, and “Editors Recommendations”.
In September 2011 the Motorola Xoom tablet received an update that brought the redesigned Android Market to an Android 3.x Honeycomb based device. In November 2011 Google added a music store to the Android Market.
According to T-Mobile Chief technical Officer Cole Brodman, near about 2300 applications available in the Market on 17 March 2009. Android Market also listed 200,000 apps and has been installed 4.5 billion of apps this has been announced by Google on 10 may 2011. Android Market features are 67% of free of charge apps and highest percentage of any major app store, closely rivaled by windows phone Market.
The Market’s biggest problem is a different lack of applications. Of the 1,000-odd available apps, most are free. The most downloaded Android application in December was a free Pac-Man game, which attracted “more than” 250,000 downloads in a month; Sega’s Super Monkey Ball on iPhone, a £3.49 purchase, shifted 300,000 copies in 20 days.
