Android Market and Google Play Store History and Updates

Canadian launch

Rogers was to release Canada’s first Android handsets, the HTC Dream and Magic, on June 2nd at stores including Future Shop and Best Buy. The Android Market opened to Canadians the same day, with both paid and free apps. As of May 15th there were about 3,200 apps, against roughly 30,000 in Apple’s App Store. Android was pitched at people who wanted more control over their phone. Later, Canadians gained access to paid apps, and Google noted that the Nexus One, available in Canada, was profitable for the company even though it was not sold in stores.

App count milestones

Milestone	Details from the posts
10,000 and 16,000 apps	Reached in September and December of the early period, according to a later recap
20,000 apps	Tracked by AndroLib: 62% free and 38% paid, with paid apps officially unavailable to Canadians then
30,000 to 38,000 apps	Reported during Google's earnings, a gain of 8,000 in a month
65,000 and 90,000 apps	Passed at the end of June, then more than 90,000 weeks before the next milestone
100,000 apps	Announced via the Android Developers account, while Apple served more than 225,000
700,000 apps	The Play Store matched the iOS App Store in total apps

Developers such as Amazon and Sling Media were porting apps from other platforms during this growth. By the time the store reached parity, the common question of whether Android has apps no longer applied, though device-specific apps could still differ.

From Android Market to Google Play

Android Market 3.4.4 was the latest version when it was announced that an over-the-air push to 3.4.6 would turn it into the Google Play Store. A manual install without root was available for those who did not want to wait. Besides the name, little changed, but Google was consolidating its services under one style. Several apps were on sale for 49 cents, with a Play of the Day for 25 cents, including SwiftKey, Shadowgun, SoundHound, World of Goo and Osmos HD. A reader poll asked whether people welcomed the change, and the author preferred the old name as more self explanatory.

At its first birthday, Google Play marked the occasion with only a handful of deals, such as the Kung Fu Panda movie at $4.99, and extra sales in movie rentals, games, movie purchases, books and magazines.

Version history and redesigns

• Market 3.0.26 and 3.0.27. A new Market with a fresh interface, book and movie rentals and downloads, a new home page and top picks. The look was compared to Windows Phone 7.
• Market 3.1.5. A small update, close to 3.1.3 but darker. Swiping between categories only appeared after tapping See more, so only the splash page changed.
• Play Store 3.9.17. A manual download before it arrived naturally. Reports were that it fixed losing your place in a long list after backing out of an app page, although that was thought to be fixed in 3.9.16.
• Cards redesign. A screenshot showed a Play Store influenced by Google Now cards, with Games as its own category. It began rolling out through the Android Blog instead of waiting for Google I/O, and supported Android 2.2 Froyo and later.
• Play Store 5.0. Leaked screenshots showed Material Design, even on devices not running Android L. Apps, Books, Movies and TV, Music and Newsstand each had their own colour palette, and a new restore feature let you choose which apps to bring back from another Android device.

One morning also brought a batch of updates, including a long awaited Google+ interface revamp with a slide-in menu, plus Box, Cut the Rope Experiments, GTasks and WordPress.

Play Newsstand and Android Excellence

Play Newsstand replaced Google Currents and Magazines for reading. The Android Excellence collection, found under the Editors’ Choice tab, has one list of apps and one of games, updated quarterly. It was meant to help users find quality and to show developers good practice in design, performance, localization and device optimization. The first apps list included Evernote, Pocket, Skyscanner, Citymapper, Lifesum, Memrise, Vivino and Sleep as Android. The games list included Hitman GO, Reigns, Toca Blocks, Golf Clash and Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes.