After a few weeks of waiting Google has began rolling out a new look Android Marketplace across the fleet of devices running Android 1.6 or above.
Users will immediately notice the new look homepage that incorporates a showcase ‘carousel’ type section on the landing page and on category pages, this section can be quickly revolved to browse the latest apps allowing users to select the app to be taken to its own description page. The official Android blog release explained the addition as “a focus on improving discoverability and merchandising”.
Google has bowed to peer pressure and logic by placing Widgets and Live wallpapers into specific categories resulting in a tidier marketplace that should be easier to navigate. Another logical evolution allows users to view all the given information of an app on a single page including the addition of content ratings when this rolls out.
One feature that will not be very popular is the refund time which has been reduced from 24 hours to a mere 15 minutes giving buyers a lot less time to back out of a purchase. This is still better than the iOS store and should provide plenty of opportunity to test out apps after making a purchase.
The press release ended with the following statement “With this release, we aimed to deliver features that are most requested by users and developers. However, we’re not done yet. We plan to continue to rapidly enhance Android Market for both users and developers and make it the best content distribution service for the Android ecosystem”.
So new features, promise of more updates and improvements in the coming weeks.
What do you think of the new Android Marketplace? Is it an improvement or a fail?
Via: T3
