Google's application-status dashboard charts program download numbers across various Android versions and devices.
Google March
17 added an application statistics dashboard to help software developers gauge
the installation performance of programs offered in the Android Market.
Available in
the main listings page of the Market Developer Console, the dashboard
summarizes each application's current download numbers, as well as each application's
distribution across Android platform versions, devices, countries and
languages.
The dashboard
also shows aggregate distribution for all application installs from Android
Market, giving developers an idea about how their applications play relative to
the rest of Market.
Ideally, this
information will give developers the insight they need to tune their
"development and marketing,"
said
Eric Chu from Google's Android Developer Ecosystem.
The application
stats dashboard, which will be updated daily, starts with data retroactive to
last December 22.
Chu also
promised his team would deliver more reporting features to help Android developers
manage applications they seed in the Android Market.
The application
stats dashboard comes long after Google
released
a device dashboard that charts the percentage of Android handsets that are
running each build of the platform.
This helps
developers decide what iterations of the Android operating system their
applications should support. For example, the current
device
dashboard (which is updated every two weeks) shows Android 2.2 comprises 61
percent of platform devices. Android 2.1 is next at 29 percent.
The dashboards
represent pieces of a broader trend for Google to sculpt the Android Market
into a respectable platform ecosystem that developers will want to go to as an
open-source alternative to Apple's iOS and iTunes App Store.
While
possessing more stringent rules, Apple's App Store offers a lot of perks for
developers, including better distribution, monetization options and, yes,
metrics.
To
better compete with Apple, Google in the last several months has stepped up its
efforts, adding
application
payment in more countries and carrier billing options,
redesigning
the Market client, adding
content
ratings and
creating
a separate Android Market Webstore.
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