Google Play Store downloads 10% higher than iOS App Store in Q2 2013

Android just seems to be raking in the numbers this quarter, giving Apple something to really worry about. The latest figures from App Annie Index reveal that as of the second quarter of 2013, Google Play store has outmatched Apple’s iOS App Store by as much as 10%. It also showed that Google Play is solidifying it’s foothold on emerging markets.

App Annie Index does a quarterly review of the two app stores and analyzes the download and revenue figures based on country and app category. In the figures relating to countries, it is interesting to note that India, Russia, and Brazil are in the top five countries in terms of downloads from Google Play. The top five countries comprise over one third of the total Google Play downloads in Q2 2013, revealing the importance that Android’s open platform is playing in emerging markets today.

In terms of types of apps, games are the most downloaded category in both Google Play and App Store, comprising roughly 40% in both markets. What is more interesting, however, is the fact that games comprise 80% of Google Play’s total revenue, compared to 75% in the App Store.

Not everything is a bed of roses for Android though. One area where iOS App Store still has Google Play beat is in app monetization. The App Annie Index shows that App Store genered more than twice the app revenue than Google Play. Maybe it’s the fragmentation, or the piracy, or many other things. But if these figures, which have steadily been rising for the past years, are any indication, Android might still get that in its pocket, sooner or later.

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The Best Google Play Store Alternatives

The Google Play Store is easily one of the best app stores out there on any platform, but you might get to the point where you just want to try something else out. So, if you’re looking to expand your horizons, we’ve put together eight of the best Play Store alternatives. Check ‘em out!

AppsFire

8th on our list is an app called AppsFire. The app has some elements that are similar to Taptu, such as the interface being driven by a number of horizontal lists. Unlike Google’s own Play Store and other Play Store alternatives, AppsFire does its best to fit as much as possible on a single screen.

There’s really nothing overly increduble about AppsFire, but it does offer a few helpful features. For example, it will tell you what apps can be moved to our microSD card, and during our tests, it even recommened apps based on the Snapdragon processor in the Nexus 4. However, the overall experience is pretty lackluster, but the small things it does makes it worth putting on this list.

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F-Droid

Next up as a marketplace known as F-Droid. This Play Store replacement will feel familiar to pretty much anyone who’s used Linux. Instead of having an outright store, it shows you available apps based on what repositories you have. It comes default with the standard F-Droid repository, but you can add your own.

It’s minimal, quick, and it works. Most of the apps there is free, and you can even see what license the app has. F-Droid will mainly appeal to open source fans because, well, everything is open source.

The only downside is that the selection isn’t very large, but there are open source alternatives to a lot of popular apps on the Play Store. Since F-Droid has to be downloaded from the web, you can find ithere.

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Getjar

Getjar is probably one the best Play Store alternative on this list when it comes to downloading and trying apps you normally wouldn’t bother with. The interface is ridiculously simple. So simple that that it doesn’t even give you categories, but people still like it.

It works pretty easily. You download the apps in Getjar, and you’re given gold coins. These gold coins can be used on in-app purchases, which is pretty cool, as it encourages people to try apps they normally would ignore. Even if you don’t want to try new apps, you can use the gold coins instead of money to get extras in apps that you actually use.

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Opera Browser

Now here’s a Play Store alternative that you probably weren’t expecting. One of the many features added to the new Opera browser is a built-in app store. So if you’re looking for a Play Store alternative and browse, this is a two birds, one stone scenario.
As with most of these, the links do defer back to the Play Store. The Opera Browser app store isn’t the most feature filled, and the interface could use some work, but you can access the app store within the browser at any time.

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App Brain

Many of you are probably familiar with AppBrain, mainly because it’s used in a lot of Android blogs for providing links to apps. When it comes down to it, it’s a solid Google Play alternative, even if it looks a little plain.

Perhaps one of the best things about AppBrain is that all of the apps come from the Play Store. Why is that? Well, AppBrain is simply a different skin that you can use to surf. The AppBrain stream, recently used apps, and the ability to manage and sync settings give you a unique view of your apps and recommendations.

All in all, it’s not a bad Play Store alternative, and it’s probably one that many of you have at least looked into.

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GO Launcher Ex

First up in our top three Play Store alternatives may be surprising as well. GO Launcher EX is indeed a launcher, but baked in the launcher is the GO Store. Having over a billion users, the GO Store actually isn’t that bad. So if you need to grab yourself a launcher and a Play Store replacement, this is another two birds, one stone scenario.

The store is pretty simple, and the best part about it is that it, well, works! You can browse games and apps by trending and other categories. This is great in particular for the GO Launcher, as you can find some pretty awesome themes for the launcher. In fact, it’s much easier to search for themes and wallpapers than on the Play Store.

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Fetch

Next up is something called Fetch. We don’t know if it’s because of the genuinely fun to use interface or the constant reference to puppies, but we really enjoyed using Fetch. It’s as solid as they come, and it’s a very competent alternative to the Play Store.

The main appeal of Fetch is that it allows you to narrow down your search by using an absurd amount of parameters. You can narrow down your app search by ranking, price, category, and pretty much anything else you can think of. It’s so thorough that you can even search for games by 2D or 3D graphics.

You can also save searches so Fetch learns what you like and, well, fetches apps for you. And yeah, there really are dog reference everywhere.

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Amazon App Store

And here we are with our last app, the cream of the crop. Enter, the Amazon App Store, one of the best Play Store alternatives you can get your hands on. Of course, it’d be disappointing if it wasn’t one of the best, because, well, Kindle Fire owners need apps, too!

By now, just about everyone should know about the free app Amazon hands out every day, and sometimes, it’s a really good app. Another unique feature is the Test Mode, which is basically a type of try before you buy model. Only, the app plays in an emulator inside the App Store.

It’s a really neat feature, and we wholeheartedly recommend this Play Store alternative, though it doesn’t have all of the popular apps that you may be used too. Since you can’t get the Amazon App Store directly from the Play Store, you can download it here.

Video review

Wrap up

If you take a look at our leaderboard (image above) you can check out how these apps stack up against one another. As per the norm, these ratings are based on Google Play Store ratings, which means that there was no bias at all compiling this list.

This was an interesting list to put together, mostly because a lot of these couldn’t even be found in the Google Play Store. As you probably know, the Amazon App Store and F-Droid have to be downloaded from the web, so we had to put them on here based on popularity.

Either way, it’s not everyday that people think of trying out a different marketplace other than the Play Store. So if you want to venture out into unknown waters, these are the apps that’ll help you do just that.

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A brief history of app pricing, and why most apps are free

We had a look at some of the app purchasing habits and statistics regarding the Google Play Store and Apple’s Appstore the other day, so to continuing in that vein, Flurry Analytics has done a little more digging into just why mobile apps are priced so low, often to the point of being free.

For this research, Flurry Analytics looked at preferences for free content verses ad subsidized apps over a four year period, reviewing nearly 350,000 different apps. Interestingly, as much as we may hate seeing ads take up our valuable screen space, Flurry found that even when faced with the choice of ads or paying just $0.99, consumers overwhelming chose the free apps.

Sadly, the research didn’t focus solely on Android, but the company’s insight into the iOS market place, which has been around a little longer, reveals a fascinating trend. Apps are becoming cheaper, and more apps than ever are now free to install without an upfront purchase. Between 2010 and 2012, the percentage of free apps fluctuated slightly, but there’s been a big jump up to 90% this year.

On top of that, the ratio of the most expensive apps, priced $3.99 or above, has shrunk since 2010, suggesting that there’s little appetite for even moderately expensive apps in the mobile market. The research also found that in instances where paid and ad supported apps were available, most people would opt for the ad versions. Furthermore, consumers were also willing to settle for different apps, in order to avoid paying an upfront cost.

Looking at us Android users, Flurry’s research supports the often made assumption that we’re a little more reluctant to open our wallets. As of April 2013, the average price of an Android app, including those which were free, is significantly lower than that paid by iPhone and iPad owners.

You could look this two ways I suppose, either we’re just highly frugal, or simply have a higher tolerance for in app advertisements than our Apple friends are. Flurry also tries to put this down to Apple product owners typically being more affluent, which might hold some truth when you look at the range of budget Android products on offer, but it’s certainly not a hard fact.

So how did we come to this arrangement, surely app developers have something to gain by charging up front prices?

Flurry Analystics also managed to get its hands on the varying prices of apps over time, and the data shows that there’s been lots of price experimentation going on over the past few years.

Rather than simply setting their prices to match or undercut the competition, an increasingly large number of developers have been testing to elasticity of their prices, and have found, through experimentation, that their apps sell best when they are cheap or free.

There’s certainly overwhelming evidence to suggest that as much as we dislike ads, the vast majority of users would rather suffer them than stump up the cash in advance, regardless of whether they own an iPhone or Android handset. Flurry also makes an excellent comparison with television and radio, where advertising is almost universally used to remote, or at least subsidize, the costs of content.

Free apps are certainly here to stay, and we may well see even more of them in the future, perhaps with advertising being used in more ingenious ways to help keeps costs down for the consumer.

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Check out this list of games that already have integrated Google’s Play Games services

Mountain View yesterday at Google I/O announced something very exciting: Google Play Games services. At the time of this writing, the new Play Games features have only been integrated in a small handful of games, but we should see more integration as time goes on.

There's only a few games that have implemented the new features, including popular titles like World of Goo, Triple Town, Plague Inc., Modern Combat 4: Zero Hour, and Beach Buggy Blitz.

Not every game you come across in the Google Play Store is going to offer the new Play Games features. ”We won't make it a mandatory exercise, or have any certification process around it,” Google lead product manager Greg Hartrell told Engadget. “We create fantastic services that allow developers to create these great game experiences, and help promote their discovery, help retain their users and keep them engaged.”

As much as I'd like to see the Play Games services become a mandatory implementation, it'd at least be nice to see a category in the Play Store that showed you which games are using the new APIs. In the meantime, Droid Gamers has a forum thread with all the games using the new services, which will be updated “until it becomes impossible to do so”.

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Action Launcher Pro version 1.5 for Android adds easy access to widgets

Have you ever wanted to easily access the widgets on your smartphone’s home screen without having to go through the trouble of actually touching the widgets yourself? No? Well, you will be able to do just that anyway, thanks to the latest version of Action Launcher PRO for Android.

Action Launcher PRO for Android is now on version 1.5, and according to the official release notes, it comes with a number of new useful features. The updated software now fully supports 10-inch tablets (including the addition of a dock), works in landscape mode by default for certain devices, allows hiding of text labels for items on the home screen, and boasts a brand new feature that might change the way you interact with your device’s home screen forever.

The newest Action Launcher PRO feature is called “Shutters” and its primary function is to let users access widgets through simple swipes performed on a regular launch icon. Now, instead of actually interacting with the widgets directly, they can be accessed through their standard launch icons and will only appear after users swipe a certain way. This will certainly help save space on the home screen and might just help users find more creative ways to fiddle with their phones and tablets.

The app is already out and available for download on Google Play, and you’ll be able to find it on the source link below. If you’d like to learn more about the most recent changes to Action Launcher PRO, then feel free to watch this embedded YouTube video.

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Love ‘Game of Thrones’? Grab the companion app from Google Play for free
 

Are you a fan of the epic HBO TV series – and the superb novels – the Game of Thrones? If you’re still trying to make your way through the books, whilst waiting for season 3 to start on the small screen, we know how difficult it can be to follow the story.
While it’s easy enough to hop on Wikia to try and make a better sense of the book’s often twisted storyline and characters, now there’s an alternative for those who like to get their fix of the hit show on Android devices. Previously released on iOS, the Game of Thrones Android app – A World of Ice and Fire – has landed on the Play Store.
The app features profiles for over 540 characters complete with artwork, 380 places, and major houses, as well as interactive world maps. Rooting for Daenerys? Well, you can easily learn more things about her, such as her detailed bio, family and house information, and more.

You can download the app for free, but it only lets you access the InfoPack from the first book. Each additional book companion will set you back $1. You might as well grab the complete set for $5 and get a bonus InfoPack.
Hit the link below to get your copy now. To get you in the medieval mood, we’ve also embedded the latest Game of Thrones trailer above. Enjoy!

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Developer Appxplore launches Alien Hive on the Google Play Store

Appxplore, a developer well known for a game called Sporos, has release a new game this week, Alien Hive.

Alien Hive may, at first, look like another Bejewled clone, but don’t let that be a turn-off, as the developer has incorporated some very unique features in the game, which, as Android Policenotes, puts an interesting twist on the genre.

In Alien Hive, just like you would slide three jewels together in Bejewled, you slide three alien seeds and eggs together. This results in evolving alien life, which you have to do more and more to create an advanced being without running out of energy.

Focusing on developing alien life isn’t the only thing you’re going to have to worry about though. Robots will notch up the difficulty level of Alien Hive a bit when they begin to steal your evolving aliens, which you have to fend off with the variety of powerups you’re given. The powerups are a nice addition to the game, but the items, like blasters and worm holes, are what you would expect from any alien-themed game.

While Alien Hive may be hard during the first few levels, players should be able to ease into the concept of the game rather quickly with a helpful set of introductory lessons. Alien Hive is a casual game, so players will be able to learn and move through levels at their own pace.

The game is currently available for free in the Google Play Store, but it is ad supported. If your interest is peaked, make sure to hit the source link below!

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