New ways to discover great apps on Android Market

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 | 9:53 AM

We’ve seen tremendous growth in Android Market lately. With over 200,000 apps supporting over 300 Android devices, we’ve had 4.5 billion applications installed to date. But with so many apps available, how do you find the ones you really want? Whether you’re looking for the most popular apps, hot new apps, or just the very best apps available, we want to help make sure that you find what you’re looking for.

Today, we’re excited to announce 5 new features for Android Market focused on helping you find apps you’ll love.


  • New top app charts - We’ve revamped our top app charts to be fresher and country-specific, so you get the most current, relevant results. We’ve also added top new free, top new paid, and top grossing lists, all right on the Android Market home page.   
  • Editors’ Choice - These are some of the very best apps available for Android, as chosen by the Android Market staff. They span everything from games to productivity and beyond.   
  • Top Developers - We’re also recognizing those developers creating the highest quality, most popular, and most notable apps available on Android Market. They’ll get a special icon on our Android Market website, appearing wherever the developer name is shown, starting today for an initial set of over 150 developers.
  • Better related apps - On the left side of an app page, you’ll now see two groups of related apps: apps frequently browsed by people who viewed this app, and apps that people tend to install alongside this app. For example, people who view ScoreMobile, my favorite sports score app, often also view other sports score apps, while those who install ScoreMobile tend to also install apps for specific sports leagues or teams. We’ll also show you related apps once you decide to install an app.
  • Trending apps - Finally, we’ve added a new section to the Android Market homepage showing trending apps – those apps that are quickly growing in daily installs. Look here to stay ahead of the curve and find new apps as they get hot.
We hope you find these features helpful as you explore the many greats apps available on Android Market. These new features are available now on http://market.android.com, and will be coming soon to Android Market on phones and tablets.


Posted by Fernando Delgado, Product Manager, Android Market

26 comments:

Rob said...

It's good to see top app on each country but is seems that it dosen't work when we click a specific category? It's normal? it will be sorted soon ?

BK said...

I keep hearing google doesn't get social...

why is there no feature to follow people? i'd certainly like to follow people who are installing the latest and greatest apps and I'd like to be able to share my list of apps with friends.

appbrain has this but apparently they put zero marketing behind it. no one uses it except Leo and Gina.
it's a good idea folks.

Unknown said...

Why DropBox missing from Editors' Choice ????????????????

Timo said...

It's really getting better and better! And I like the editor's choice category!
(I miss one small thing about the webbased market though.. clicking trough screenshots, instead of having to close and open a new one all the time, just as is possible on devices)

john said...

Too little too late. Amazon's app store is still leagues ahead.

Szabó Jenő said...

Yeah. While my country is blacklisted, and we cannot purchase anything on the Android market, you can make it as fancy as you wish.

Mike Kasprzak said...

Great, but this still only serves to help developers that have managed to stand out and get Google's or the media's attention in the first place (Hey Google, check out Smiles HD). An ocean of 200,000 applications is insanely vast, and with no eyes on the approval process, there's still no easy for Google to catch that "Hey, this person made something great for our platform".

Deen said...

Should be interesting to see how that turns out.

www.anon-web.es.tc

hojberg said...

I wish there would be a section for apps that can be stored to the SD card only.
The way it is now, an app has to be damn good if I should spend valuable space for it on my phone, given the little space available.
As for now, I have to install an app, see if it can be moved or not and delete it again if it can't.

Nedzork said...

nice, i cant wait to have my first android

hokansoc said...

Since this is about the market updates, i figure this is as good a place as any to comment about the new google movies.

Your service is lacking one (in my mind) important feature. I have only a 24 hour period to finish watching a movie from the time I start watching it. However, I am unable to find any way to tell WHEN I started watching it, and therefore when the 24 hour period is over. This information is rather important to those of us that have to stop a movie partway through and resume it later. Would this be a possible feature to add?

-Corey Hokanson
Android Enthusiast

Sébastien said...

Or you can use this tool: http://appaware.org/

The Practical Idealist said...

Shouldn't the text say "4.5 billion application installations" as opposed to "4.5 billion applications installed"? It's a minor point, but accuracy is accuracy

The Practical Idealist said...

@hokansoc: Indeed! Also, if any part of the movie was watched on an Android mobile device, could the service send us reminders about the imminent expiry too please?

sesouls said...

How about an app that lets you see how long it's been since you last used an app on your phone? That way, when you are running out of space on your phone, you can look and see which apps you haven't been using in a while and possibly free up more space.

Zeroid Company said...

I'm a brazilian developer and don't feel the changes really helping any of my country fellows.

Firstly: so far the brazilian users got too much concentrated in apps created to be globally. What if they want portuguese only or something national about the apps?

Secondly: Unfortunately the top apps for Brazil are almost the same as global top and its not going to be changed without a proper look from the Android Market. This makes us developers to struggle to reach our customers and makes virtually impossible to compete with grand players even locally.

Am I missing something or there are a obvius preference for google to americans developers??

Secondly:

Steven Burman said...

Still no way to filter for apps designed specifically for my Honeycomb tablet?

Maith said...

this is great... but still, my market account isn't showing all the apps I downloaded on my phone..

saikrishna said...

wow this app is verry use full....
mobileapps

Chris said...

Hello.. I'm the developer for Drawing Pad. It is a top iPad and Nook app, but we are having trouble getting publicity on Android Market. Drawing Pad is the #2 app on B&N Nook Color, second to Angry Birds. Could someone from Google please contact me regarding marketing opportunities? Thanks.

Chris Lott
Software Engineer
Murtha Design, Inc.

chris - at - murthadesign.com

zamre said...

Thinking???
Zamre Bin Ab. Wahab

Mårten said...

Bugs in Android Market.

1. There's no way of switching from one screenshot to another without first closing the one you have open
2. You are unable to close the screenshots with clicking outside the screenshot.
3. Screenshots in landscape mode should be rotated for easy viewing.¨
4. Doesn't support multiple Google Accounts eg. I have one Google account and one Google Apps account. My market is on the Google account but I'm always logged into the apps account.

5. There needs to be an easy filter to remove all hits from apps that are not translated to English or my local language (eg. I don't want all japanese/chinese hits when searching)

Manjunath said...

I am from India, Today i purchased android publishers account just to know that there is no support for google check out at this time in india :D

I have developed few apps which i like to sell on android market place.

I came to know that google is allowing for developers from Brazil, Israel, Mexico, Russia etc to get payments via Adsense...

I too have active adsense account from past 2 years and why it is not allowed for indian developers?

lexoo said...

The android market is not making some applications available to android users in Ghana.cnn app,skynews tec are not available in Ghana,why the discrimination ?

Falcor said...

I agree with other comments: The market should show ALL apps installed, not only the paid ones. If ever I need to reset my device, why should I then have to search through the market in order to find the apps I had before.

Also, why is there no method of selecting a group of apps and pushing them all to my device? You can only install individual apps? Ugh...

Cloud said...

Any plans to help those who are just entering market get noticed? So far all systems promote developers who are already on top.
May be do more detailed categorization, separate B2B and consumer applications, etc.