Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) has quietly added a feature to its Android Market Webstore that tells users whether an application is compatible with their registered Android handsets and tablets.
On the left side of any application’s Web page in the Android Market online store, users may see a line with a plus button that says, “This application is compatible with all of your devices.”
Click the button, and Google produces a full list of devices a user has signed into with his or her Google account.
This is a big help in an era where Android has flooded the market with over 300 devices in more than 100 countries.
There are over 200,000 applications in the Market, and there are 450,000 Android developers writing programs for more than a handful of Android OS versions.
These include Android 1.6, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, and now Android 3.0 and 3.1 on the tablet branch.
Obviously, not every application will work with every device, so the new feature will help solve any mysteries for users and keep them from wasting time adding an application that won’t run well on their device.
This is just one of the many steps Google has taken this year to improve the Market.
Google launched the Android Market Webstore, which lets users find and purchase applications from their desktop computer and install them to their Android device. Google has also added application download stats, merchant sales reports, in-application payment support, among other improvements.
The company still has a long way to go to catching Apple’s App Store, which has 400,000-plus applications and has turned into a cash cow for iOS developers all over the world.
Google is banking on the continued popularity of Android devices to buy it time to match Apple’s chops in application sales, availability and deployment.