New version of the Android Market released
0The rumors have finally come true: the new version of the Android Market is already here. Throughout this week the Android users around the world (starting from the USA) will get an update of the Android Market that will completely change its appearance and performance. We couldn’t stay aside, so let’s zoom in it!
First off, the new design is inspired by Windows Phone 7 applications store, regarding both distribution and navigation. The home screen is divided in three frames: featured apps, categories and the browser. This distribution is quite more user-friendly and serves a dual premise: help the users, let the users do. That means: the “featured apps” are suggestions from the Market provider (and probably a new source of business), and the categories are just an open door to let the users search and find apps by themselves. There are four category-tabs displayed on the home screen: apps, games books and movies. However, this distribution won’t be the same for all countries because of “books” and “movies” lets access to Google Books and Google Movies, not available everywhere.
Regarding navigation, this new update of the market changes the rules of the game. Until now, the market was designed to search, find and leave. The browser was the keystone. Now, Google wants to make it a market “to stay”, a place to navigate through and find apps out. The keystone is the scroll. If you scroll it down from the home, you will see more featured apps. If you scroll right, you will go through top app streams: free, paid, grossing, new releases, most popular. Finally, if you scroll left from the home, you get to the full list of categories.
The new version of the Android Market makes finding apps something faster and easier. It contributes to enhance the Android community by improving user experience. We should really appreciate that. However, we think that this new market is giving too much priority to the “Top” apps (via promoting them). Our opinion is it shouldn’t be this way (at least not only) because there are coming up great apps every day that need to be discovered (not all developers have the resources to promote them). And there’s where we (AndroidZoom) have something to say.
Within a community, everyone plays a role and contributes to help the others with their own knowledge and skills. Thus, the new Android Market is providing a great (and improved) service. AndroidZoom is contributing to enhance Android by helping you to discover the best apps. We’re proud of our Trends tab and many other features, on Monday we launched our Youtube Channel, and we’re working hard on a bunch of surprises and new features to help users and developers alike. In the end, we are all in the same boat and the goal is shared: to improve the Android user experience, enlarge and strengthen the Android community and let everyone choose how his smartphone should be.
