Google Play Store: Two really decent innovations are on their way for the app store for Android, which is actually preinstalled on every Android smartphone. Google has now officially announced a lower percentage that is taken from the income of a large part of the app developers. The fees in the Play Store will even be reduced by half from July 1st of the year!
Lower fees could drop prices on apps
All app developers with an annual income of no more than one million US dollars are affected. Quite a few app and game developers should therefore benefit from the said change. Google even speaks of 99% of the world’s developers benefiting from the halving of fees. Which in turn also shows that the 30% previously stipulated had hit the “smaller ones” in particular. Google follows Apple, who cut their fees a little earlier.
Now it is up to the developers to possibly correct their prices as well. Maybe by 7%? So you pass on half of the positive effect to your own customers and still benefit from 8% higher income.
App installs get better with crowdsourcing
Google is also introducing “App Install Optimization”, for which data about usage behavior in apps is collected and analyzed. To do this, “Google can determine which parts of an app you are using when you open it for the first time after installation”. If you have learned this behavior from enough users, the installation of an app can be adapted and optimized accordingly.
Google promises three things to users and developers:
- Speed up installation for apps from Google Play.
- Reduce the time it takes to open and run apps.
- Reduce the load on your device’s CPU, battery and memory.
For a long time, Google has been striving to ensure that apps can be used immediately when the installation starts, even if the download and installation are not yet finished. I know that from the Xbox, for example. Parts of a game could already be used during the installation. However, we are more pleased if the hardware of the mobile devices can be relieved.
These innovations are probably not live yet. You can switch off the app installation optimization in the settings if you wish.
