Introducing Google Play

[This post is by Kenneth Lui, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]

For more than a year we’ve been focused on expanding the reach, content, and monetization opportunities of Android Market. We started by extending the store to users on the web and then went on to add books, movies, and music. The number of people who have visited, registered, and downloaded from the store has been amazing.



Today we’re launching Google Play, an integrated destination for apps, books, movies, and music, accessible to users on Android devices and to anyone on the Web. As part of this launch, Google Play replaces and extends Android Market — users everywhere can now find their favorite apps and games in Google Play, with other digital content, all in one place.



We believe that with a strong brand, compelling offerings, and a seamless purchasing and consumption experience, Google Play will drive more traffic and revenue to the entire ecosystem.



We’ll be investing in the brand to bring Google Play to as many people as possible, and we’ll also invest in the latest digital content to keep Google Play fresh, relevant, and engaging. Apps and games remain the core of Google Play, so we’ll continue investing in new ways to connect users with their favorite apps, and developers with new customers.

As we grow and promote Google Play around the world, we’ll be marketing your apps and games at the same time. Our policies have not changed and our goal is still the same — to create a great, open marketplace for distributing Android apps.



Google Play is built on the same infrastructure as Android Market, so the transition for users and developers will be seamless. Users can sign into their existing accounts with the same credentials as before and purchase content using the same payment methods. As a developer, there’s no change needed to your published products and you can continue to use the same publishing tools to put your app in front of hundreds of millions of Android users. If your app was in Android Market yesterday, it’s in Google Play today.



We’ll be rolling out Google Play to devices in a phased OTA update, starting today and continuing over the days to come. With the update, the Android Market app will upgrade to the Play Store app and the Music, Videos, and Books apps will upgrade to Play Music, Play Movies, and Play Books. This update is for devices running Android 2.2 or higher, and users on other devices will continue to have the same access to your apps as before.



You can start sending customers to your products in Google Play right away. Check out the updated “Get it on Google Play” badges and look for an email with more details on the transition. In the meantime, you can check out the Google Play web site at the link below and join the discussion on +Android Developers.

http://play.google.com

New App Stats for Publishers on Android Market

If you've published an app on Android Market, you’ve probably used Application Statistics to help tune your development and marketing efforts. Application Statistics is a set of dashboards in the Developer Console that shows your app’s installation performance across key dimensions such as countries, platform versions, device models, and others. Today we are making Application Statistics even more powerful for publishers, adding new metrics, new ways to analyze your data, and a redesigned UI that’s much easier to use.

First, we are adding important new installation metrics to the dashboards. You can now see your installations measured by unique users, as well as by unique devices. For user installations, you can view active installs, total installs, and daily installs and uninstalls. For devices, you can see active installs as well as daily installs, uninstalls, and upgrades.



Along with the new metrics, we’re also introducing two new data dimensions — Carrier and App Version. You can use them to track your app’s installation trends across mobile operators or monitor the launch metrics of specific app updates.



To give you visibility over your installation data over time, we’re adding timeline charts for all metrics and dimensions. At a glance, these charts highlight your app’s installation peaks and longer-term trends, which you can correlate to promotions, app improvements, or other factors. You can even focus in on data inside a dimension by adding specific points (such as individual platform versions or languages) to the timeline.



Finally, we’re bringing you all of the new metrics, dimensions, and timelines in a completely redesigned UI that is faster, more compact, and easier to use. Each dimension is now displayed in dedicated tab, making it easier to click through your stats daily or as often as needed. If you track your stats in another tool, we’re also adding an export capability that lets you download your stats in a single CSV file.



Check out the new Application Statistics next time you visit the Android Market Developer Console. We hope they’ll give you new insight into your app’s user base and installation performance. Watch for related announcements soon — we are continuing to work on bringing you the reporting features you need to manage your products successfully on Android Market.



Please feel free to share any new insights or tips on +Android Developers!

A Closer Look at 10 Billion Downloads

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]



On Tuesday, we announced that Android Market passed 10 Billion app downloads. We wanted to look a little deeper at that huge number. First question: which app was lucky number 10 billion? Photobucket Mobile. They’ll be getting a great prize package, including tickets to next year’s Google I/O developer conference.



Remember we still have 8 days left to celebrate 10 billion downloads with 10-cent apps on Android Market. You can follow which apps are promoted each day on +Android, our Google+ page.



Here’s a graphical deep dive into 10 billion downloads...

Games Coming to Android Market in Korea

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]



In the 24 months since the first Android device became available locally, Korea has quickly become one of the top countries in Android device activations. In parallel, we’ve also seen tremendous growth in app downloads from Android Market. Korea is now the second-largest consumer of apps worldwide. Today we are adding to this momentum by bringing games to Android Market in Korea.



Starting right away, Android users in Korea can explore the many thousands of popular game titles available in Android Market and download them onto their devices. For paid games, purchasing is fast and convenient through direct carrier billing, which lets users in Korea easily charge their purchases to their monthly mobile operator bills.



If you are a game developer, now is the time to localize your game resources, app descriptions, and marketing assets to take advantage of this new opportunity. When you are ready, please visit the Android Market developer console to target your app for distribution in South Korea and set prices in Korean Won (KRW). If you don’t want to distribute to Korea right away, you can also exclude it.



With the huge popularity of games on Android and the convenience of direct carrier billing in Korea, we expect to see a jump in game purchases and downloads in the weeks ahead. For game developers worldwide, it’s “game on” in Korea!

More Carrier Billing Options on Android Market

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]



Over the past year, we’ve seen very strong growth in the number of Android users around the world. To make it easier for those users to purchase their favorite apps and games on Android Market, we’re bringing Direct Carrier Billing to additional carrier networks in South Korea, the UK, and Germany.



In South Korea, we’ve begun a phased rollout of the service to users on the top two carrier networks — SK Telecom and KT Corporation. When complete, the rollout will reach more than 10 million users, who will be able to charge their Android Market purchases straight to their phone bills.



In Europe, we’re rolling out the service to users on two popular regional carriers, Vodafone UK and Vodafone DE. Initially, the service will be available only to users who have purchased their devices through Vodafone’s online and retail channels.



The new launches expand the network of carriers already offering direct billing service in the US on the T-Mobile, AT&T, and Sprint networks, and in Japan on SoftBank, KDDI, and NTT DOCOMO networks.



Direct Carrier Billing is a key payment option for users worldwide, especially in regions where credit cards are less common. We will continue to partner with more operators to offer this payment option to their Android users. Watch for more announcements in the weeks ahead.

Multiple APK Support in Android Market

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]

At Google I/O we announced our plans to add several new capabilities to help developers manage their products more effectively in Android Market. We’re pleased to let you know that the latest of those, multiple APK support, is now available. Multiple APK support is a new publishing option in Android Market for those developers who want extra control over distribution.

Until now, each product listing on Android Market has included a single APK file, a universal payload that is deliverable to all eligible devices — across all platform versions, screen sizes, and chipsets. Broad distribution of a single APK works very well for almost all applications and has the advantage of simplified product maintenance.

With multiple APK support, you can now upload multiple versions of an APK for a single product listing, with each one addressing a different subset of your customers. These APKs are complete, independent APKs that share the same package name, but contain code and resources to target different Android platform versions, screen sizes, or GL texture-compression formats. When users download or purchase your app, Android Market chooses the right APK to deliver based on the characteristics of the device.

When you upload multiple APK files, Android Market handles them as part of a single product listing that aggregates the app details, ratings, and comments across the APKs. All users who browse your app’s details page see the same product with the same description, branding assets, screenshots, video, ratings, and comments. Android Market also aggregates the app’s download statistics, reviews, and billing data across all of the APKs.

Multiple APK support gives you a variety of ways to control app distribution. For example, you could use it to create separate APKs for phones and tablets under the same product listing. You could also use it to take advantage of new APIs or new hardware capabilities without impacting your existing customer base.

To support this new capability, we’ve updated the Developer Console to include controls for uploading and managing APKs in a product listing — we encourage you to take a look. If you’d like to learn more about how multiple APK support works, please read the developer documentation. As always, please feel free to give us feedback on the feature through the Market Help Center.

A New Android Market for Phones

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]

Earlier this year, we launched several important features aimed at making it easier to find great applications on Android Market on the Web. Today, we're very excited to launch a completely redesigned Android Market client that brings these and other features to phones.

The new Market client is designed to better showcase top apps and games, engage users with an improved UI, and provide a quicker path to downloading or purchasing your products. For developers, the new Android Market client means more opportunities for your products to be merchandised and purchased.

In the home screen, we've created a new promotional page that highlights top content. This page is tiled with colorful graphics that provide instant access to featured apps and games. The page also lets users find their favorite books and movies, which will help drive even more return visits to Market.

To make it fun and easy for users to explore fresh content, we've added our app lists right to the Apps and Games home pages. Users can now quickly flip through these lists by swiping right or left, checking out what other people are downloading in the Top Paid, Top Free, Top Grossing, Top New Paid, Top New Free, and Trending lists. To keep the lists fresh and relevant, we've made them country-specific for many of the top countries.

To help you convert visitors to customers, we’ve made significant changes to the app details page. We've moved the app name and price into a compact action bar at the top of the page, so that users can quickly download or purchase your app. Directly below, users can flip through screen shots by swiping right or left, or scroll down to read your app's description, what's new, reviews, and more. To help you promote your product more effectively, the page now also includes a thumbnail link to your product video which is displayed at full screen when in landscape orientation.

For users who are ready to buy, we've streamlined the click-to-purchase flow so that users can complete a purchase in two clicks from the app details page. During the purchase, users can also see a list of your other apps, to help you cross-sell your other products.

With a great new UI, easy access to app discovery lists, a convenient purchase flow, and more types of content, we believe that the new Market client will become a favorite for users and developers alike.

Watch for the new Market client coming to your phone soon. We've already begun a phased roll-out to phones running Android 2.2 or higher — the update should reach all users worldwide in the coming weeks. We encourage you to try the update as soon as you receive it. Meanwhile, check out the video below for an early look.

Things That Cannot Change

[This post is by Dianne Hackborn, whose fingerprints can be found all over the Android Application Framework — Tim Bray]

Sometimes a developer will make a change to an application that has surprising results when installed as an update to a previous version — shortcuts break, widgets disappear, or it can’t even be installed at all. There are certain parts of an application that are immutable once you publish it, and you can avoid surprises by understanding them.

Your package name and certificate

The most obvious and visible of these is the “manifest package name,” the unique name you give to your application in its AndroidManifest.xml. The name uses a Java-language-style naming convention, with Internet domain ownership helping to avoid name collisions. For example, since Google owns the domain “google.com”, the manifest package names of all of our applications should start with “com.google.” It’s important for developers to follow this convention in order to avoid conflicts with other developers.

Once you publish your application under its manifest package name, this is the unique identity of the application forever more. Switching to a different name results in an entirely new application, one that can’t be installed as an update to the existing application.

Just as important as the manifest package name is the certificate that application is signed with. The signing certificate represents the author of the application. If you change the certificate an application is signed with, it is now a different application because it comes from a different author. This different application can’t be uploaded to Market as an update to the original application, nor can it be installed onto a device as an update.

The exact behavior the user sees when installing an application that has changed in one of these two ways is different:

• If the manifest package name has changed, the new application will be installed alongside the old application, so they both co-exist on the user’s device at the same time.

• If the signing certificate changes, trying to install the new application on to the device will fail until the old version is uninstalled.

If you change the signing certificate of your application, you should always change its manifest package name as well to avoid failures when it’s installed. In other words, the application coming from a different author makes it a different application, and its package name should be changed appropriately to reflect that. (Of course it’s fine to use the same package name for the development builds of your app signed with your test keys, because these are not published.)

Your AndroidManifest.xml is a public API

More than just your package name that is immutable. A major function of the AndroidManifest.xml is essentially to declare a public API from your application for use by other applications and the Android system. Every component you declare in the manifest that is not private (that is whose android:exported state is true) should be treated as a public API and never changed in a way that breaks compatibility.

A subtle but important aspect of what constitutes a break in compatibility is the android:name attribute of your activity, service, and receiver components. This can be surprising because we think of android:name as pointing to the private code implementing our application, but it is also (in combination with the manifest package name) the official unique public name for that component, as represented by the ComponentName class.

Changing the component name inside of an application can have negative consequences for your users. Some examples are:

• If the name of a main activity of your application is changed, any shortcuts the user made to it will no longer work. A shortcut is an Intent that directly specifies the ComponentName it should run.

• If the name of a service implementing a Live Wallpaper changes, then a user who has enabled your Live Wallpaper will have their wallpaper revert to the system default when getting the new version of your app. The same is true for Input Methods, Accessibility Services, Honeycomb’s new advanced Widgets, and so on.

• If the name of a receiver implementing a Device Admin changes, then as with the live wallpaper example, the device admin will be disabled when the application is updated. This also applies to other kinds of receivers, such as App Widgets.

These behaviors are an outcome of how the Intent system is used on Android. There are two main kinds of Intents:

• Implicit Intents only specify “what” they should match, using actions, categories, data, MIME types, and so on. The exact components that they will find are only determined at run-time, by the Package Manager matching it against the current applications.

• Explicit Intents specify a single explicit “who” they should match, through a ComponentName. Regardless of whatever else is in the Intent, it is only associated with the exact manifest package name and class name as given in its ComponentName.

Both of these types of Intents are important to how Android interacts with your application. A typical example of this is how users browse and select live wallpapers.

To let the user pick a live wallpaper, the first thing Android must do is show them a list of the available live wallpaper services. It does this by building an implicit Intent with the appropriate action for a live wallpaper and asking the Package Manager for all services that support this Intent. The result is then the list of live wallpapers shown to the user.

When the user actually selects a specific live wallpaper they want to use, however, Android now must build an explicit Intent that identifies that particular live wallpaper. This is what is handed to the WallpaperManager to tell it which wallpaper to show.

This is why changing the name of the component in your manifest will cause the wallpaper to disappear: the explicit Intent that was previously saved is now invalid because the ComponentName it references no longer exists. There is no information available to indicate what the new name of the component is. (For example consider if your application had two different live wallpaper services the user could select.) Instead, Android must treat that live wallpaper as uninstalled and revert to its default wallpaper.

This is how input methods, device administrators, account managers, app widgets, and even application shortcuts work. The ComponentName is the public unique name of the components you declare in your manifest, and must not change if they are visible to other applications.

In conclusion: There are some parts of your application that can not change. Please be careful.

Merchant Sales Reports on Android Market

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]

As part of our ongoing efforts to provide better tools to help you manage your business, we are introducing merchant sales reporting on Android Market. Developers now have convenient access to monthly reports that detail the financial performance of their applications directly from the Android Market Developer Console.

Based on Google Checkout financial data, these reports provide per-transaction details including additional information such as device information, currency of sale, and currency conversion rate. Developers will be able to easily download these reports as a CSV (comma-separated values) files to enable further analysis at their convenience.

Starting today, developers can download merchant sales reports for March 2011 from the Developer Console. Reports for months going back to January 2010 will be available in the coming weeks. Moving forward, sales reports for each month will be available by the 10th day of the following month.

We hope you’ll find these new sales reports useful. As always, please don’t hesitate to give us feedback through Market Help Center.

New Carrier Billing Options on Android Market

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]

Since last year, we’ve been working to bring the convenience of Direct Carrier Billing to more Android Market users on more carrier networks. Building on the launches to T-Mobile US and AT&T users in 2010, we’ve recently launched Direct Carrier Billing to users on three popular networks in Japan -- SoftBank, KDDI, and NTT DOCOMO.

The momentum continues and today we’re excited to announce that Direct Carrier Billing is now available on Sprint. We've begun a phased roll-out of the service that will reach all users in the next few days. When complete, Android users on the Sprint network will be able to charge their Android Market purchases to their Sprint mobile bill with only a few clicks.

We believe that Direct Carrier Billing is a key payment option because it lets users purchase and pay for apps more easily. It’s also important because it offers a convenient way to buy in regions where credit cards are less common.

We are continuing to partner with more carriers around the world to offer carrier billing options to their subscribers. Watch for announcements of new payment options coming in the months ahead.

In-app Billing Launched on Android Market

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]

Today, we're pleased to announce the launch of Android Market In-app Billing to developers and users. As an Android developer, you will now be able to publish apps that use In-app Billing and your users can make purchases from within your apps.

In-app Billing gives you more ways to monetize your apps with try-and-buy, virtual goods, upgrades, and other billing models. If you aren’t yet familiar with In-app Billing, we encourage you to learn more about it.

Several apps launching today are already using the service, including Tap Tap Revenge by Disney Mobile; Comics by ComiXology; Gun Bros, Deer Hunter Challenge HD, and WSOP3 by Glu Mobile; and Dungeon Defenders: FW Deluxe by Trendy Entertainment.

To try In-app Billing in your apps, start with the detailed documentation and complete sample app provided, which show how to implement the service in your app, set up in-app product lists in Android Market, and test your implementation. Also, it’s absolutely essential that you review the security guidelines to make sure your billing implementation is secure.

We look forward to seeing how you’ll use this new service in your apps!

Application Stats on Android Market

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]

On the Android Market team, it’s been our goal to bring you improved ways of seeing and understanding the installation performance of your published applications. We know that this information is critical in helping you tune your development and marketing efforts. Today I’m pleased to let you know about an important new feature that we’ve added to Android Market called Application Statistics.

Application Statistics is a new type of dashboard in the Market Developer Console that gives you an overview of the installation performance of your apps. It provides charts and tables that summarize each app’s active installation trend over time, as well as its distribution across key dimensions such as Android platform versions, devices, user countries, and user languages. For additional context, the dashboard also shows the comparable aggregate distribution for all app installs from Android Market (numbering in the billions). You could use this data to observe how your app performs relative to the rest of Market or decide what to develop next.

To start with, we’ve seeded the application Statistics dashboards with data going back to December 22, 2010. Going forward, we’ll be updating the data daily.

We encourage you to check out these new dashboards and we hope they’ll give you new and useful insights into your apps’ installation performance. You can access the Statistics dashboards from the main Listings page in the Developer Console.

Watch for more announcements soon. We are continuing to work hard to deliver more reporting features to help you manage your products successfully on Android Market.

New Merchandising and Billing Features on Android Market

[This post is by Eric Chu, Android Developer Ecosystem. —Dirk Dougherty]

Following on last week’s announcement of the Android 3.0 Preview SDK, I’d like to share some more good news with you about three important new features on Android Market.

Android Market on the Web

Starting today, we have extended Android Market client from mobile devices to every desktop. Anyone can now easily find and share applications from their favorite browser. Once users select an application they want, it will automatically be downloaded to their Android-powered devices over-the-air.

Android Market on the Web dramatically expands the discoverability of applications through a rich browsing experience, suggestion-guided searching, deep linking, social sharing, and other merchandising features.

We are releasing the initial version of Android Market on the Web in English and will be extending it to other languages in the weeks ahead.

If you have applications published on Android Market, we encourage you to visit the site and review how they are presented. If you need additional information about what assets you should provide, please visit Android Market Help Center.

You can access Android Market on the Web at:

http://market.android.com/

Buyer’s Currency

Android Market lets you sell applications to users in 32 buyer countries around the world. Today we’re introducing Buyer’s Currency to give you more control over how you price your products across those countries. This feature lets you price your applications differently in each market and improves the purchase experience for buyers by showing prices in their home currencies.

We’ll be rolling out Buyer’s Currency in stages, starting with developers in the U.S. and reaching developers in other countries shortly after. We anticipate it will take approximately four months for us to complete this process.

We encourage you to watch for the appearance of new Buyer’s Currency options in the Android Market publishing console and set prices as soon as possible.

In-app Billing

After months of hard work by the Android Market team, I am extremely pleased to announce the arrival of In-app Billing on Android Market. This new service gives developers more ways to monetize their applications through new billing models including try-and-buy, virtual goods, upgrades, and more.

The In-app Billing service manages billing transactions between apps and users, providing a consistent purchasing experience with familiar forms of payment across all apps. At the same time, it gives you full control over how your digital goods are purchased and tracked. You can let Android Market manage and track the purchases for you or you can integrate with your own back-end service to verify and track purchases in the way that's best for your app.

We’ll be launching In-app Billing in stages. Beginning today, we are providing detailed documentation and a sample application to help you get familiar with the service. Over the next few weeks we’ll be rolling out updates to the Android Market client that will enable you to test against the In-app Billing service. Before the end of this quarter, the service will be live for users, to enable you to start monetizing your applications with this new capability. For complete information about the rollout, see the release information in the In-app Billing documentation.

Helping developers merchandise and monetize their products is a top priority for the Android Market team. We will continue to work hard to to make it the best marketplace for your to distribute your products. For now, we hope you’ll check out these new features to help you better deliver your products through Android Market.

Android 2.2 and developers goodies.

Today at Google I/O we announced that Android 2.2 is right around the corner. This is our seventh platform release since we launched Android 1.0 in September 2008. We wanted to highlight five areas in particular:

Performance & speed: The new Dalvik JIT compiler in Android 2.2 delivers between a 2-5X performance improvement in CPU-bound code vs. Android 2.1 according to various benchmarks.

New enterprise capabilities: We’ve added Exchange capabilities such as account auto-discovery and calendar sync. Device policy management APIs allow developers to write applications that can control security features of the device such as the remote wipe, minimum password, lockscreen timeout etc.

Faster, more powerful browser: We have brought the V8 JavaScript engine to the Android browser as part of 2.2. This has resulted in a 2-3X improvement in JavaScript performance vs. 2.1.

Rich set of new APIs and services: New data backup APIs enable apps to participate in data backup and restore, allowing an application's last data to be restored when installed on a new or a reset device. Apps can utilize Android Cloud to Device Messaging to enable mobile alert, send to phone, and two-way push sync functionality. Developers can now declare whether their app should be installed on internal memory or an SD card. They can also let the system automatically determine the install location. On the native side, a new API now gives access to Skia bitmaps.

Additions to Android Market: Android Market provides Android Application Error Reports, a new bug reporting feature, giving developers access to crash and freeze reports from users. Developers will be able to access these reports via their account on the Android Market publisher website.

For a complete list of everything we’ve included in Android 2.2, please see the platform highlights.

Developers can now download the Android 2.2 SDK and Android NDK, Revision 4 from the Android developer site.

Tools update

We are releasing new version of the Android SDK Tools, Revision 6, Eclipse plug-in ADT 0.9.7 and Android NDK, Revision 4.

Android SDK Tools, Revision 6, Eclipse plug-in 0.9.7

These new versions include support for library projects that will help you share code and resources across several Android projects.

Android NDK, Revision 4

Workflow improvements
The new NDK brings a host of workflow improvement, from compilation, to debugging. Starting with 2.2, the NDK enables debugging native code on production devices.

ARMv7 instruction set support
This release enables the generation of machine code for the ARMv7-A instruction set. Benefits include higher performance, as well as full use of the hardware FPU for devices that support it.

ARM Advanced SIMD (a.k.a. NEON) instruction support
The NEON instruction set extension can be used to perform scalar computations on integers and floating points. However, it is an optional CPU feature and will not be supported by all Android ARMv7-A based devices. The NDK includes a tiny library named "cpufeatures" that can be used by native code to test at runtime the features supported by the device's target CPU.

For more information, please see the releases notes for the SDK Tools, ADT, and NDK.

As I said at the beginning, Android 2.2 will be here soon, and some devices will get the update in the coming weeks. I invite application developers to download the new SDK and tools and test your applications today.

Check out the video below to learn more about Android 2.2.

Knowing is half the battle

As a developer, I often wonder which Android platforms my applications should support,especially as the number of Android-powered devices grows. Should my application only focus on the latest version of the platform or should it support older ones as well?

To help with this kind of decision, I am excited to announce the new
device dashboard. It provides information about deployed Android-powered devices that is helpful to developers as they build and update their apps. The dashboard provides the relative distribution of Android platform versions on devices running Android Market.

Android Platform Percentage of Devices 1.1 0.3% 1.5 27.7% 1.6 54.2% 2.0 2.9% 2.0.1 14.8%

The above graph shows the relative number of Android devices that have accessed Android Market during the first 14 days of December 2009.

From a developer's perspective, there are a number of interesting points on this graph:

• At this point, there's little incentive to make sure a new application is
  backward compatible with Android 1.0 and Android 1.1.
• Close to 30% of the devices are running Android 1.5. To take advantage of this significant install base, you may consider support for Android 1.5.
• Starting with Android 1.6, devices can have different screen densities & sizes. There are several devices out there that fall in this category, so make sure to adapt your application to support different screen sizes and take advantage of devices with small, low density (e.g QVGA) and normal, high density (e.g. WVGA) screens. Note that Android Market will not list your application on small screen devices unless its manifest explicitly indicates support for "small" screen sizes. Make sure you properly configure the emulator and test your application on different screen sizes before uploading to Market.
• A new SDK for Android 2.0.1 was released two weeks ago. All Android 2.0 devices will be updated to 2.0.1 before the end of the year, so if your application uses features specific to Android 2.0, you are encouraged to update it to take advantage of the latest Android 2.0.1 API instead.

In summary, Android 1.5, 1.6, and 2.0.1 are the 3 versions of the platform that are deployed in volume. Our goal is to provide you with the tools and information to make it easy for you to target specific versions of the platform or all the versions that are deployed in volume.

We plan to update the dashboard regularly to reflect deployment of new Android platforms. We also plan to expand the dashboard to include other information like devices per screen size and so on.

Some News from Android Market

I'm pleased to let you know about several updates to Android Market. First, we will soon introduce new features in Android Market for Android 1.6 that will improve the overall experience for users. As part of this change, developers will be able to provide screenshots, promotional icons and descriptions that will better show off applications and games.

We have also added four new sub-categories for applications: sports, health, themes, and comics. Developers can now choose these sub-categories for both new and existing applications via the publisher website. Finally, we have added seller support for developers in Italy. Italian developers can go to the publisher website to upload applications and target any of the countries where paid applications are currently available to users.

To take advantage of the upcoming Android Market refresh, we encourage you to visit the Android Market publisher website and upload additional marketing assets. Check out the video below for some of the highlights.

Android Market update: priced applications for US users

Last Friday, we enabled developers to upload priced apps and saw a flurry of activity in the days that followed. Today, it is my pleasure to let you know that we have begun the phased rollout of priced applications to T-Mobile G1 users in the US. Once the service is enabled on their devices, T-Mobile G1 users will be able to see the priced apps immediately without the need to reboot. For more details on this update to Android Market, please see last week's blogpost.

Android Market update: support for priced applications

I'm pleased to announce that Android Market is now accepting priced applications from US and UK developers. Developers from these countries can go to the publisher website at http://market.android.com/publish to upload their application(s) along with end user pricing for the apps. Initially, priced applications will be available to end users in the US starting mid next week. We will add end user support for additional countries in the coming months.

We will also enable developers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands, France, and Spain to offer priced applications later this quarter. By the end of Q1 2009, we will announce support for developers in additional countries. Developers can find more information about priced applications in Android Market at http://market.android.com/support/

Google Checkout will serve as the payment and billing mechanism for Android Market. Developers who do not already have a Google Checkout merchant account can easily sign up for one via the publisher website.

Also, Android Market for free applications will become available to users in Australia starting February 15th Pacific Time and in Singapore in the coming weeks. Developers can now make their applications available in these countries via the publisher website at http://market.android.com/publish.

We look forward to seeing more great applications on Android Market.

Android Market: Now available for users

Last month I outlined some details around Android Market. Today, Android Market launched for users to download applications along with the first Android-powered phone—the T-Mobile G1.

With Android Market, users can easily download apps to their Android-powered phone. Users can also rate the apps they've downloaded and leave comments. These users' ratings along with anonymous usage statistics help determine how apps are ranked and presented within Android Market.

If you're a developer, you will be able to register and upload your applications starting next Monday, 2008-10-27, when we've wrapped up a few final details. In order to make sure that each developer is authenticated and responsible for their apps, you will need to register and pay a one time $25 application fee. Once registered, your apps can be made available to users without further validation or approval.

Starting in early Q1, developers will also be able to distribute paid apps in addition to free apps. Developers will get 70% of the revenue from each purchase; the remaining amount goes to carriers and billing settlement fees—Google does not take a percentage. We believe this revenue model creates a fair and positive experience for users, developers, and carriers.

There are already over 50 apps available in Android Market today. You can view a showcase of some of these apps—which include multimedia, location-based tools, barcode scanners, travel guides and games—at http://www.android.com/market/. Now that Android Market is live and ready for contributions, we hope to see developers adding their own compelling apps starting next week.

In the coming months, we'll continue to roll out additional tools and enhancements to Android Market. We also expect to see additional Android-powered devices rolling out by different carriers around the world. Starting today, you can get a device, test your apps on it, and get them ready for upload. On Monday, to share your app with the world, simply register, upload your application and publish it. It's really that easy. I look forward to seeing what you bring to the Market.

Update: As of Monday morning (2008-10-27), http://market.android.com/publish is now available for developers to publish their apps on Android Market.

Android Market: a user-driven content distribution system

When we talk to developers, a common topic is the challenge of getting applications in the hands of users. That's why today I'm happy to share early details of Android Market—an open content distribution system that will help end users find, purchase, download and install various types of content on their Android-powered devices. The concept is simple: leverage Google's expertise in infrastructure, search and relevance to connect users with content created by developers like you.

Developers will be able to make their content available on an open service hosted by Google that features a feedback and rating system similar to YouTube. We chose the term "market" rather than "store" because we feel that developers should have an open and unobstructed environment to make their content available. Similar to YouTube, content can debut in the marketplace after only three simple steps: register as a merchant, upload and describe your content and publish it. We also intend to provide developers with a useful dashboard and analytics to help drive their business and ultimately improve their offerings.

I also wanted to share some early details to help with planning your efforts so that you can be ready as our partners release the first Android-powered handsets. Developers can expect the first handsets to be enabled with a beta version of Android Market. Some decisions are still being made, but at a minimum you can expect support for free (unpaid) applications. Soon after launch an update will be provided that supports download of paid content and more features such as versioning, multiple device profile support, analytics, etc. Below are some screenshots that illustrate some of the security features and workflow.

With the addition of a marketplace, the Android ecosystem is becoming even more robust. I am incredibly energized by the support and amazing content I've seen so far. We will share more details as they are available and I look forward to working with many of you in the coming months.