Chinese Developers Can Now Offer Paid Applications to Google Play Users in More Than 130 countries

By Ellie Powers, product manager for Google Play

Google Play is the largest digital store for Android users to discover and purchase their favorite mobile app and games, and the ecosystem is continuing to grow globally. Over the past year, we�ve expanded the list of countries where app developers can sign up to be merchants on Google Play, totaling 60 countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, Oman, Pakistan, Puerto Rico, Qatar and Venezuela most recently.

As part of that continued effort, we�re excited to announce merchant support in China, enabling local developers to export and sell their apps to Google Play users in more than 130 countries. Chinese developers can now offer both free and paid applications through various monetization models, including in-app purchasing and subscriptions. For revenue generated on Google Play, developers will receive payment to their Chinese bank accounts via USD wire transfers.

If you develop Android apps in China and want to start distributing your apps to a global audience through Google Play, visit play.google.com/apps/publish and register as a developer. If you want to sell apps and in-app products, you'll need to also sign up for a Google Wallet merchant account, which is available on the �Revenue� page in the Google Play Developer Console. After you�ve uploaded your apps, you can set prices in the Developer Console and later receive reports on your revenue. You�ll receive your developer payouts via wire transfer. For more details, please visit our developer help center.

We look forward to continuing to roll out Google Play support to developers in many more countries around the world.

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EyeEm Improves User Engagement through Android Design

By Leticia Lago, Google Play team

EyeEm is a global community for photographers that goes beyond sharing photos with friends: photographers can share tips, take part in missions, and sell their photos. To win more customers, a design that best showcases photos from the community is very important for this Berlin-based company.

With the idea of bringing a beautiful, simple experience to their fast growing base of Android users, the team recently embarked on a redesign of their app. Following the Android design principles, they stripped back the UI and simplified navigation. This allowed them to deliver a more streamlined app experience, along with a clean, crisp design that presents photos beautifully. And it paid off. According to Ramzi Rizk, EyeEm co-founder and CTO, �Our new design helped improve user growth and retention across the board, in every single metric we have.�

In the following video, Rizk and colleague Matias Castello, Product Head of Mobile, talk about their experience applying Android design to their app and the improvements in user engagement it has achieved:

Resources to help you with design

To learn more about how to design your apps for Android devices and achieve great user engagement and retention, be sure to check out these resources:

• Android Design � all the information you need to understand and implement Android design principles in your app.



• Design.Bytes � presented by the Google designers who created Material Design and apps, such as the Google I/O 2014 app, these videos provide a fun and informative introduction to Android design.

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Introducing a New Guide, �The Secrets to App Success on Google Play�

By Dom Elliott, Google Play team

With more than 50 billion apps and games downloaded in total, Google Play is helping developers and content creators around the world build successful businesses. In fact, we paid out more than $5 billion over the last year to developers for creating incredible apps that are changing the way people communicate, live, work, and play.

Developing an app or game and distributing it on Google Play is a good start, but it�s only the first step to building a sustainable business. That�s why we�ve written �The Secrets to App Success on Google Play,� a detailed playbook on the best practices and tools you can use to maximize the reach, retention, and revenue of your new app.

The guide is separated into the following sections:

• Publishing on Google Play — using the Google Play Developer Console to distribute your app to over 1 billion Android users worldwide.


• Quality — The fundamentals of building a great app and an insight into the Google Play guidelines and policies.


• Discoverability & reach — Maximizing your app's discoverability and reaching the widest audience possible.


• Engagement & retention — Converting installations into active users and improving user retention.


• Monetization — Monetization strategies to generate ongoing, growing revenue streams.


• Measurement with Google Analytics — Understanding your users and improving your app experience, conversions, and marketing.


• Going global — Launching your app in local markets around the world.

Download the guide now in English (PDF, 11MB) or get it on Google Play. We�ll release the guide in more languages in the coming months. If you�re in the US or the UK, we also have a limited number of printed copies that we are offering to send for free. Request a printed copy here.

Once you�ve checked out the guide, we�d love to hear your feedback so we can continue to improve, let us know what you think.

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Going Global: Space Ape Games Finds Success in Japan

By Leticia Lago, Google Play team

There are many ways to find success for a game on the international stage: it�s not a simple formula, it�s a combination of things, ranging from localizing effectively to choosing the right price. London-based Space Ape Games brought together a range of resources and tactics to take Samurai Siege into Japan, growing that market to contribute up to 15% of the game�s average $55,000 daily earnings.

John Earner, Simon Hade, and Toby Moore founded Space Ape Games in 2012 with just 12 people. Their goal, to create amazing multiplayer mobile games. Samurai Siege is their first game and they found that Android players have great retention and monetize well. �Our experience has been great with Google Play. We have found that it is half of our audience and half of our business,� says John.

Check out the video below to hear more about how Space Ape expanded to Japan.

Resources to help you grow globally

You can grow your games business worldwide too, and maximize your distribution potential with Google Play. Be sure to check out these resources:

• Reaching players in new territories panel [VIDEO] — Hear first hand experiences from game developers who have successfully taken games to international markets. Antonin Lhuillier (Gameloft), Anatoly Ropotov (Game Insight), Saad Choudri (Miniclip), Eyal Rabinovich (Playscape), and Joe Raeburn (Space Ape Games) share their tips for localization, culturalization, and more.



• Go Global session [VIDEO] — Hyunse Chang, from the Google Play Apps and Games team in Korea, shares key insights into APAC markets and trends among successful apps and games in the region. Leverage these pro tips and best practices to expand your reach to a wider audience.



• Localization checklist — This document identifies the essential aspects of localization, to help you get your app ready for a successful worldwide launch on Google Play.

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The fastest route between voice search and your app

By Jarek Wilkiewicz, Developer Advocate, Google Search

How many lines of code will it take to let your users say Ok Google, and search for something in your app? Hardly any. Starting today, all you need is a small addition to your AndroidManifest.xml in order to connect the Google Now SEARCH_ACTION with your searchable activity:

<activity android:name=".SearchableActivity">
    <intent-filter>
        <action android:name="com.google.android.gms.actions.SEARCH_ACTION"/>
        <category android:name="android.intent.category.DEFAULT"/>
    </intent-filter>
</activity>

Once you make these changes, your app can receive the SEARCH_ACTION intent containing the SearchManager.QUERY extra with the search expression.

At Google, we always look for innovative ways to help you improve mobile search and drive user engagement back to your app. For example, users can now say to the Google app: �Ok Google, search pizza on Eat24� or �Ok Google, search for hotels in Maui on TripAdvisor.�

This feature is available on English locale Android devices running Jelly Bean and above with the Google app v3.5 or greater. Last but not least, users can enable the Ok Google hot-word detection from any screen, which offers them the fastest route between their search command and your app!

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Updated Cross-Platform Tools in Google Play Game Services

By Ben Frenkel, Google Play Games team

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Game services UIs are now updated for material design, across all of the SDKs.

Game developers, we've updated some of our popular developer tools to give you a consistent set of game services across platforms, a refreshed UI based on material design, and new tools to give you better visibility into what users are doing in your games.

Let�s take a look at the new features.

Real-time Multiplayer in the Play Games cross-platform C++ SDK

To make it easier to build cross-platform games, we�ve added Real-Time Multiplayer (RTMP) to the latest Google Play Games C++ SDK. The addition of RTMP brings the C++ SDK to feature parity with the Play services SDK on Android and the Play Games iOS SDK. Learn more »

Material Design refresh across Android, cross-platform C++, and iOS SDKs

We�ve incorporated material design into the user-interface of the latest Play Games services SDKs for Android, cross-platform C++, and iOS. This gives you a bold, colorful design that�s consistent across all of your games, for all of your users. Learn more »

New quests features and completion statistics

Quests are a popular way to increase player engagement by adding fresh content without updating your game. We�ve added some new features to quests to make them easier to implement and manage.

First, we�ve simplified quests implementations by providing out-of-the-box toasts for �quest accepted� and �quest completed� events. You can invoke these toasts from your game with just a single call, on any platform. This removes the need to create your own custom toasts, though you are still free to do so.

You also have more insight into how your quests are performing through new in-line quest stats in the Developer Console. With these stats, you can better monitor how many people are completing their quests, so you can adjust the criteria to make them easier to achieve, if needed. Learn more »

Last, we�ve eliminated the 24-hour lead-time requirement for publishing and allowing repeating quests to have the same name. You now have the freedom to publish quests whenever you want with whatever name you want.

New quest stats let you see how many users are completing their quests.

Multiplayer game statistics

Now when you add multiplayer support through Google Play game services, you get multiplayer stats for free, without having to implement a custom logging solution. You can simply visit the Developer Console to see how players are using your multiplayer integration and look at trends in overall usage. The new stats are available as tabs under the Engagement section. Learn more »

Multiplayer stats let you see trends in how players are using your app's multiplayer integration.

New game services insights and alerts

We�re continuing to expand the types of alerts we offer the Developer Console to let you know about more types of issues that might be affecting your users' gameplay experiences. You�ll now get an alert when you have a broken implementation of real-time and turn-based multiplayer, and we�ll also notify you if your Achievements and Leaderboard implementations use too many duplicate images. Learn more »

Get Started

You can get started with all of these new features right away. Visit the Google Play game services developer site to download the updated SDKs. For migration details on the Game Services SDK for iOS, see the release notes. You can take a look at the new stats and alerts by visiting the Google Play Developer Console.

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Google Play Services 6.1

Google Play services 6.1 is now rolled out to devices worldwide, bringing you the newest features from Google to help you optimize your apps. You can get started developing today by downloading the Google Play services SDK from the Android SDK Manager.

Google Play services 6.1 adds Enhanced Ecommerce analytics support from Google Tag Manager and offers new improvements to the Google Drive Android API. With the latest release, we�re also including a refresh of the Google Fit developer preview, so that you can test your fitness apps on any Android device.

Analytics

Launched in Google Play services 5.0, Enhanced Ecommerce is an analytics extension designed to provide richer insights into pre-purchase shopping behavior and into product performance. It�s a great way to gain visibility into the full customer journey, helping you understand how different user acquisition campaigns are performing at a granular level. By including support for Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Tag Manager with the latest release of Google Play services, we are supercharging your ability to regularly update and manage tags on mobile apps more easily, so that you can consistently measure product impressions, shopping funnel events, and more.

Drive

To make it easier to use Drive, we added enhancements to the Google Drive Android API. With the new Completion Events feature, you can see when actions are committed to the server and improve the response time to conflicts. Material design elements have been incorporated into the File Picker UI, along with the addition of Recent and Starred views. A new setParents() method enables you to organize files and folders, while the previous Contents class has been replaced with a simpler DriveContents class.

Learn more about how to use these new features in this DevBytes video.

Google Fit

Initially introduced in August, the Google Fit Developer Preview has been refreshed to enable you to test your new fitness apps on any Android device. We expect to make additional changes to the APIs, so please check back with us on new developments.

Get Started

To get started developing, download the latest Google Play services SDK from the Android SDK Manager. For details on the new APIs, take a look at the New Features documentation. For setup information, see Set Up Google Play Services SDK.

To learn more about Google Play services and the APIs available to you through it, visit the Google Services section on the Android Developers site.

We hope you enjoy this release of Google Play services!

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The Beautiful Design Summer 2014 Collection on Google Play

Posted by Marco Paglia, Android Design Team

It�s that time again! Last summer, we published the first Beautiful Design collection on Google Play, and updated it in the winter with a fresh set of beautifully crafted apps.

Since then, developers have been hard at work updating their existing apps with new design ideas, and many new apps targeted to phones and tablets have launched on Google Play sporting exquisite detail in their UIs. Some apps are even starting to incorporate elements from material design, which is great to see. We�re on the lookout for even more material design concepts applied across the Google Play ecosystem!

Today, we're refreshing the Beautiful Design collection with our latest favorite specimens of delightful design from Google Play. As a reminder, the goal of this collection is to highlight beautiful apps with masterfully crafted design details such as beautiful presentation of photos, crisp and meaningful layout and typography, and delightful yet intuitive gestures and transitions.

The newly updated Beautiful Design Summer 2014 collection includes:

Flight Track 5, whose gorgeously detailed flight info, full of maps and interactive charts, stylishly keeps you in the know.

Oyster, a book-reading app whose clean, focused reading experience and delightful discovery makes it a joy to take your library with you, wherever you go.

Gogobot, an app whose bright colors and big images make exploring your next city delightful and fun.

Lumosity,
Vivino,
FIFA,
Duolingo,
SeriesGuide,
Spotify,
Runtastic,
Yahoo News Digest… each with delightful design details.

Airbnb, a veteran of the collection from this past winter, remains as they continue to finesse their app.

If you�re an Android designer or developer, make sure to play with some of these apps to get a sense for the types of design details that can separate good apps from great ones. And remember to review the material design spec for ideas on how to design your next beautiful Android app!.

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Grow with Google Play: Scaled Publishing and New App Insights

By Kobi Glick, Google Play team

If you're growing your business on Google Play, the Google Play Developer Console is one of the most important tools at your disposal. At Google I/O, we introduced a number of new changes that give you valuable insight into how your app is performing. Here's an overview of some of the improvements you can now take advantage of.

Publishing API for scaling your app operations

Today we're happy to announce that the Google Play Developer Publishing API is now available to all developers. The API will let you upload APKs to Beta testing, Staged rollout and Production, and integrate publishing operations with your release processes and toolchain. The Publishing API also makes it easier for you to manage your in-app products catalog, provide tablet-specific screenshots, and localize your store listing text and graphics. The Publishing API will help you focus on your core business, with less time managing your releases, even as your business grows to more apps and markets.

Actionable insights at the right time

Email notifications for alerts

Recently, we added Alerts in the Developer Console to let you know when there are sudden changes in important stats like app installs, ratings, and crashes. You can now turn on email notifications for Alerts so that, even while you�re not in the Developer Console, you�ll be informed of relevant events before they can have a broader effect on your app. You can turn on email notifications for one or more of your apps under Email Preferences in the Developer Console settings.

New Optimization Tips

You�ll now see new Optimization Tips with instructions when we detect opportunities to improve your app. For example, we�ll let you know when updated versions of APIs you use are available — such as new Google Play in-app billing or Google Maps APIs. For games developers, we�ll also surface opportunities to use Google Play game services that can help improve users� gaming experience and drive engagement. To see what tips we suggest for you, go to your app in the Developer Console and click on Optimization Tips.

Better data to inform your business decisions

Enhanced revenue statistics

To help you better understand your commercial success, we�ve enhanced revenue statistics in the Finance section of the Developer Console. We now let you see the average revenue per paying user (ARPPU) and give you more ways to analyse buyer data, such as comparing returning buyers (i.e., those who also made purchases in the past) to new buyers.

Bulk export of reviews

You can already engage with your users by reading and replying to reviews in the Developer Console and we�ve now added bulk export of reviews so you can download and analyze your app�s reviews en masse. This is particularly useful if you receive a large volume of reviews and want to perform your own sentiment analysis.

Improved stats for beta releases and staged rollouts

Since last year�s launch, you�ve used beta testing to release alpha and beta versions of your app, and staged rollout to gradually launch your app to production. To help you make the most of this feature, we�re now improving the way alpha, beta and staged rollout specific stats are displayed. When viewing your app and crash statistics you can now filter the app version by alpha, beta, or staged rollout to better understand the impact of your testing.

Improved reporting of native crashes

If you develop in native code, we�ve improved the reporting and presentation specifically for native crashes, with better grouping of similar crashes and summarizing of relevant information.

Deep-linking to help drive engagement

Finally, we�ve also added website verification in the Developer Console, to enable deep-linking to your app from search results. Deep-linking helps remind users about the apps they already have. It is available through search for all apps that implement app indexing. For example, if a user with the Walmart Android app searches for �Chromecast where to buy�, they�ll go directly to the Chromecast page in the Walmart app. The new App Indexing API is now open to all Android developers, globally. Get started now.

We hope you find these features useful and take advantage of them so that you can continue to grow your user base and improve your users� experience. If you're interested in some other great tools for distributing your apps, check out this blog post, or any of the sessions which have now been posted to the Google Developers Channel.

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Google Play Services 5.0

Google Play services 5.0 is now rolled out to devices worldwide, and it includes a number of features you can use to improve your apps. This release introduces Android wearable services APIs, Dynamic Security Provider and App Indexing, whilst also including updates to the Google Play game services, Cast, Drive, Wallet, Analytics, and Mobile Ads.

Android wearable services

Google Play services 5.0 introduces a set of APIs that make it easier to communicate with your apps running on Android wearables. The APIs provide an automatically synchronized, persistent data store and a low-latency messaging interface that let you sync data, exchange control messages, and transfer assets.

Dynamic security provider

Provides an API that apps can use to easily install a dynamic security provider. The dynamic security provider includes a replacement for the platform's secure networking APIs, which can be updated frequently for rapid delivery of security patches. The current version includes fixes for recent issues identified in OpenSSL.

Google Play game services

Quests are a new set of APIs to run time-based goals for players, and reward them without needing to update the game. To do this, you can send game activity data to the Quests service whenever a player successfully wins a level, kills an alien, or saves a rare black sheep, for example. This tells Quests what�s going on in the game, and you can use that game activity to create new Quests. By running Quests on a regular basis, you can create an unlimited number of new player experiences to drive re-engagement and retention.

Saved games lets you store a player's game progress to the cloud for use across many screen, using a new saved game snapshot API. Along with game progress, you can store a cover image, description and time-played. Players never play level 1 again when they have their progress stored with Google, and they can see where they left off when you attach a cover image and description. Adding cover images and descriptions provides additional context on the player�s progress and helps drive re-engagement through the Play Games app.

App Indexing API

The App Indexing API provides a way for you to notify Google about deep links in your native mobile applications and drive additional user engagement. Integrating with the App Indexing API allows the Google Search app to serve up your app�s history to users as
instant Search suggestions, providing fast and easy access to inner pages in your app. The deep links reported using the App Indexing API are also used by Google to index your app�s content and surface them as deep links to Google search result.

Google Cast

The Google Cast SDK now includes media tracks that introduce closed caption support for Chromecast.

Drive

The Google Drive API adds the ability to sort query results, create folders offline, and select any mime type in the file picker by default.

Wallet

Wallet objects from Google take physical objects (like loyalty cards, offers) from your wallet and store them in the cloud. In this release, Wallet adds "Save to Wallet" button support for offers. When a user clicks "Save to Wallet" the offer gets saved and shows up in the user's Google Wallet app. Geo-fenced in-store notifications prompt the user to show and scan digital cards at point-of-sale, driving higher redemption. This also frees the user from having to carry around offers and loyalty cards.

Users can also now use their Google Wallet Balance to pay for Instant Buy transactions by providing split tender support. With split tender, if your Wallet Balance is not sufficient, the payment is split between your Wallet Balance and a credit/debit card in your Google Wallet.

Analytics

Enhanced Ecommerce provides visibility into the full customer journey, adding the ability to measure product impressions, product clicks, viewing product details, adding a product to a shopping cart, initiating the checkout process, internal promotions, transactions, and refunds. Together they help users gain deeper insights into the performance of their business, including how far users progress through the shopping funnel and where they are abandoning in the purchase process. Enhanced Ecommerce also allows users to analyze the effectiveness of their marketing and merchandising efforts, including the impact of internal promotions, coupons, and affiliate marketing programs.

Mobile Ads

Google Mobile Ads are a great way to monetise your apps and you now have access to better in-app purchase ads. We've now added a default implementation for consumable purchases using the Google Play In-app Billing service.

And that�s another release of Google Play services. The updated Google Play services SDK is now available through the Android SDK manager. For details on the APIs, please see New Features in Google Play services 5.0.

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Building Successful Global App Businesses

By: Purnima Kochikar, Director, Google Play Apps & Games

With over 1 billion active Android users, an increasing number of developers like you are building successful global businesses on Google Play. Since the last Google I/O, we�ve also paid out more than $5 billion to developers.

This week at Google I/O, we announced new ways to help you build a successful business. These solutions work together at scale to help you find more users, understand and engage them, and effectively convert your active users into buyers.

Build an engaging app

Last year, Google Play became an even better place to try new ideas. Since May 2013, Google Play offers Alpha and Beta Testing so that you can engage users early to get feedback on your new app. Feedback provided by users is private, allowing you to fix issues before publicly launching the app, and without impacting your public ratings and reviews. Over 80,000 apps on Google Play are actively using beta testing. You can also ensure new versions get a positive response by updating through staged rollouts.

Scale operations

As your app business grows, you dedicate more time to release management. Today we announced the Google Play Developer Publishing API to help you scale your release operations. The new API will let you upload APKs, manage your in-app products and localized store listings. You will be able to integrate publishing operations with your release processes and toolchain through a RESTful API. With the Google Play Developer Publishing API you�ll spend less time managing your releases and more time managing your business. This API is currently in closed beta and we look forward to making it available to all developers.

Actionable insights

The Google Play Developer Console now offers more actionable insights into your app�s performance by sending you email notifications for Alerts and providing Optimization Tips. We�re also offering new revenue metrics including number of buyers and average revenue per paying user. You�ll also be able to export user reviews for further analysis. Click on Announcements in the Developer Console for a list of new features.

For game developers, we recently launched enhanced Play Games statistics on the Google Play Developer Console. You get a daily dashboard that visualizes player and engagement statistics for signed in users, including daily active users, retention analysis, and achievement and leaderboard performance.

Enhance discovery and engagement

With AdWords, we're building a robust platform to help you promote your app and drive re-engagement. This week we are launching Installed App Category Targeting, a new way to promote your app to new users. It helps you reach potential customers across the AdMob network who have already installed apps from related categories on Google Play and other app stores. For example, an action-oriented game developer may wish to reach users who have previously installed apps from the category Action & Adventure Games.

Ads can also remind users about the apps they already have. Through Google mobile display and search ads deep linking, you can re-engage users who have already installed your Android app by taking them directly to specific pages in the app. Let�s say someone has the Hotel Tonight app installed on their phone. If they search Google for �hotels in San Francisco," they'll see an ad that will open Hotel Tonight app and take them directly to a list of San Francisco hotels.

This deep-linking is also available through search for all apps that implement app indexing. If a user with the Walmart Android app searches for �Chromecast where to buy�, they�ll go directly to the Chromecast page in the Walmart app. The new App Indexing API is now open to all Android developers, globally. Get started now.

New services for game developers

For game developers using Play Games, we announced a new Game Profile that is automatically customized based on the gameplay and achievements earned in those games. Since its launch last year, users have loved saving their game progress in the cloud. We�re now evolving this feature to Saved Games, where users can save up to 3 �bookmarks� of their progress in the Play Games app, complete with images and descriptions. Finally, we announced a new service called Quests — it you run online, time-based goals in your game; for example, players can collect bunch of in-game items on a specific day, and the quests services coordinates with your game to know who completed the goal. These APIs run events for your players, and reward them, without the need to update your game.

New monetization tools

Today, we announced that users who have set up Direct Carrier Billing on their smartphone can also make purchases on Google Play from their tablet, charging to the same mobile phone bill. In addition to our recent launch of payments through PayPal, these new user payment options expand monetization opportunities for your apps.

As announced earlier this year, Google Analytics is now directly available in the AdMob interface, giving you powerful segmentation tools to determine the best monetization strategy for each user. For example, you might want to display in-app purchase ads to users most interested in buying, while showing regular ads to those less likely to buy right now. Once you�ve segmented your audience in this way, you can use AdMob to build interstitial ads that promote in-app purchase items to users at a point in your app that�s useful to them. This creates a more customized experience for users, can help prolong engagement and grow in-app purchase revenue. Learn more.

Join us

If you're at Google I/O 2014, please join us at our breakout sessions today and tomorrow, where we'll be talking about these features in much more detail. (Add us to your calendar!) And if you can't make I/O, you can always join us on the livestream or watch the videos online later.

Google I/O 2014
I/O Livestreams
I/O Bytes Videos
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L Developer Preview
Material Design
Android Wear
Android TV
Android Auto

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New Demographic Stats in Google Play Games Services

By Ben Frenkel, Google Play Games team

Hey game developers, back in March you may remember we added new game statistics in the Google Play Developer Console for those of you who had implemented Google Play Games: our cross-platform game services for Android, iOS and the web.

Starting today, we're providing more insights into how your games are being used by adding country, age, and gender dimensions to the existing set of reports available in the Developer console. You�ll see demographics integrated into Overview stats as well as the Players reports for New and Active users.

In the Overview stats you can now see highlights of activity by age group, most active countries, and gender.

With a better understanding of your users� demographic composition, you'll be able to make more effective decisions to improve retention and monetization. Here a few ways you could imagine using these new stats:

• You just launched your new game globally, and expected it do particularly well in Germany. Using country demographic data, you see that Germany is much less active than expected. After some digging, you realize that your tutorial was not properly translated to German. Based on this insight, you immediately roll out a fix to see if you can improve active users in Germany.

In the Players stats section the new metrics reveal trends in how your app is doing across age groups, countries, and gender.

• After Looking at your new demographics report you realize that your game is really popular with women in their mid-20s. Your in-app purchase data corroborates this, showing that the one female hero character is the most popular purchase. Empowered by this data, you race to add female hero characters to your game.

Additionally, if you're already using Google Play game services, there's no extra integration needed! By logging in to the Google Play Developer Console you can start using demographics to better inform your decisions today.

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Helping You Go Global with More Seamless Google Play Payments

By Ibrahim Elbouchikhi, Google Play Product Manager

Sales of apps and games on Google Play are up by more than 300 percent over the past year. And today, two-thirds of Google Play purchases happen outside of the United States, with international sales continuing to climb. We�re hoping to fuel this momentum by making Google Play payments easier and more convenient for people around the world.

PayPal support

Starting today, we're making it possible for people to choose PayPal for their Google Play purchases in 12 countries, including the U.S., Germany, and Canada. When you make a purchase on Google Play in these countries, you'll find PayPal as an option in your Google Wallet; just enter your PayPal account login and you'll easily be able to make purchases. Our goal is to provide users with a frictionless payment experience, and this new integration is another example of how we work with partners from across the payments industry to deliver this to the user.

Carrier billing and Google Play gift cards in more countries

Carrier billing—which lets people charge purchases in Google Play directly to their phone bill—continues to be a popular way to pay. We�ve just expanded coverage to seven more countries for a total of 24, including Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan. That means almost half of all Google Play users have this option when making their purchases.

We�ve also made Google Play gift cards available to a total of 13 countries, including Japan and Germany.

Support for developer sales in more countries

Developers based in 13 new countries can now sell apps on Google Play (with new additions such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey), bringing the total to 45 countries with support for local developers. We�ve also increased our buyer currency support to 28 new countries, making it even easier for you to tailor your pricing in 60 countries.

Nothing for you to do!

Of course, as developers, when it comes to payments, there�s nothing for you to do; we process all payments, reconcile all currencies globally, and make a monthly deposit in your designated bank account. This means you get to focus on what you do best: creating beautiful and engaging apps and games.

Visit developer.android.com for more information.

Per-country availability of forms of payment is summarized here.

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Google Play services 4.4

A new release of Google Play services has now been rolled out to the world, and as usual we have a number of features that can make your apps better than before. This release includes a major enhancement to Maps with the introduction of Street View, as well as new features in Location, Games Services, Mobile Ads, and Wallet API.



Here are the highlights of Google Play services release 4.4:

Google Maps Android API

Starting with a much anticipated announcement for the Google Maps Android API: Introducing Street View. You can now embed Street View imagery into an activity enabling your users to explore the world through panoramic 360-degree views. Programmatically control the zoom and orientation (tilt and bearing) of the Street View camera, and animate the camera movements over a given duration. Here is an example of what you can do with the API, where the user navigates forward one step:

We've also added more features to the Indoor Maps feature of the API. You can turn the default floor picker off - useful if you want to build your own. You can also detect when a new building comes into focus, and find the currently-active building and floor. Great if you want to show custom markup for the active level, for example.

Activity Recognition

And while we are on the topic of maps, let�s turn to some news in the Location API. For those of you that have used this API, you may have seen the ability already there to detect if the device is in a vehicle, on a bicycle, on foot, still, or tilting.



In this release, two new activity detectors have been added: Running, and Walking. So a great opportunity to expand your app to be even more responsive to your users. And for you that have not worked with this capability earlier, we hardly need to tell the cool things you can do with it. Just imagine combining this capability with features in Maps, Games Services, and other parts of Location...

Games Services Update

In the 4.3 release we introduced Game Gifts, which allows you to request gifts or wishes. And although there are no external API changes this time, the default requests sending UI has been extended to now allow the user to select multiple Game Gifts recipients. For your games this means more collaboration and social engagement between your players.

Mobile Ads

For Mobile Ads, we�ve added new APIs for publishers to display in-app promo ads, which enables users to purchase advertised items directly. We�re offering app developers control of targeting specific user segments with ads, for example offering high-value users an ad for product A, or new users with an ad for product B, etc.



With these extensions, users can conveniently purchase in-app items that interest them, advertisers can reach consumers, and your app connects the dots; a win-win-win in other words.

Wallet Fragments

For the Instant Buy API, we�ve now reduced the work involved to place a Buy With Google button in an app. The WalletFragment API introduced in this release makes it extremely easy to integrate Google Wallet Instant Buy with an existing app. Just configure these fragments and add them to your app.

And that�s another release of Google Play services. The updated Google Play services SDK is now available through the Android SDK manager. Coming up in June is Google I/O, no need to say more�

For the release video, please see:

DevBytes: Google Play services 4.4



For details on the APIs, please see:

New Features in Google Play services 4.4

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Google Play services 4.3

Google Play services 4.3 has now been rolled out to the world, and it contains a number of features you can use to improve your apps. Specifically, this version adds some new members to the Google Play services family: Google Analytics API, Tag Manager, and the Address API. We�ve also made some great enhancements to the existing APIs; everything to make sure you stay on top of the app game out there.



Here are the highlights of the 4.3 release.

Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

The Analytics API and Google Tag Manager has existed for Android for some time as standalone technologies, but with this release we are incorporating them as first class citizens in Google Play services. Those of you that are used to the API will find it very similar to previous versions, and if you have not used it before we strongly encourage you to take a look at it.

Google Analytics allows you to get detailed statistics on how you app is being used by your users, for example what functionality of your app is being used the most, or which activity triggers users to convert from an advertised version of an app to paid one. Google Tag Manager lets you change characteristics of your app on-the-fly, for example colors, without having to push an update from Google Play.

Google Play Games services Update

The furious speed of innovation in Android mobile gaming has not slowed down and neither have we when it comes to packing the Google Play Game services API with features.

With this release, we are introducing game gifts, which allows players to send virtual in-game requests to anyone in their Google+ circles or through player search. Using this feature, the player can send a 'wish' request to ask another player for an in-game item or benefit, or a 'gift' request to grant an item or benefit to another player.

This is a great way for a game to be more engaging by increasing cross player collaboration and social connections. We are therefore glad to add this functionality as an inherent part of the Games API, it is an much-wanted extension to the multi-player functionality included a couple of releases ago. For more information, see: Unlocking the power of Google for your games.

Drive API

The Google Drive for Android API was just recently added as a member of the Google Play services API family. This release adds a number of important features:

• Pinning - You can now pin files that should be kept up to date locally, ensuring that it is available when the user is offline. This is great for users that need to use your app with limited or no connectivity
  
  


• App Folders - An app often needs to create files which are not visible to the user, for example to store temporary files in a photo editor. This can now be done using App Folders, a feature is analogous to Application Data Folders in the Google Drive API
  
  


• Change Notifications - You can now register a callback to receive notifications when a file or folder is changed. This mean you no longer need to query Drive continuously to check if the data has changed, just put a change notification on it
  
  

In addition to the above, we've also added the ability to access a number of new metadata fields.

Address API

This release will also includes a new Address API, which allows developers to request access to addresses for example to fill out a delivery address form. The kicker is the convenience for the user; a user interface component is presented where they select the desired address, and bang, the entire form is filled out. Developers have been relying on Location data which works very well, but this API shall cater for cases where the Location data is either not accurate or the user actually wants to use a different address than their current physical location. This should sound great to anyone who has done any online shopping during the last decade or so.



That�s it for this time. Now go to work and incorporate these new features to make your apps even better!

And stay tuned for future updates.



For the release video, please see:

DevBytes: Google Play Services 4.3



For details on the APIs, please see:

Google Analytics

Google Tag Manager

Google Play Games services Gifts

Google Drive Android API - Change Events

Google Drive Android API - Pinning

Google Drive Android API - App Folder

Address API

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Unlocking the Power of Google for Your Games, at GDC

By Greg Hartrell, Google Play Games team

Today, everyone is a gamer — in fact, 3 in every 4 Android users are playing games, allowing developers to reach an unprecedented audience of players in an Android ecosystem that�s activated over one billion devices. This has helped Google Play Games — Google�s cross-platform game service and SDK for Android, iOS and the web (which lets you easily integrate features like achievements, leaderboards, multiplayer and cloud save into your games) — grow at tremendous speed. The momentum continues on Google Play, where four times more money was paid out to developers in 2013 than in 2012.

With the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week, we announced a number of new features for Google Play Games and other Google products. As they launch over the coming weeks, these new services and tools will help you unlock the power of Google to take your games to the next level.

Power your game and get discovered

With game gifts, players in your games can send virtual in-game objects to anyone in their circles or through multiplayer search.

To help players get the most out of your games, Play Games will be expanding engagement and discovery options.

We'll be introducing game gifts, a new service that lets players send virtual in-game objects to anyone in their circles or through player search. The Play Games app now supports multiplayer invites directly, further helping players discover your game and keep them playing. And the Google Play Store will also feature 18 new game categories, making it easier for players to find games they'll love.

Tools to take your game to the next level

Further enhancing Google Play Game services, we're expanding multiplayer to support iOS, bringing turn-based and real-time multiplayer capabilities to both Android and iOS.

To further help with cross platform game development, we're updating our Play Games Unity Plug-in to support cross-platform multiplayer services, and introducing an early Play Games C++ SDK to support achievements and leaderboards.

In addition, we're launching enhanced Play Games statistics on the Google Play Developer Console, providing easy game analytics for Play Games adopters. Developers will gain a daily dashboard that visualizes player and engagement statistics for signed in users, including daily active users, retention analysis and achievement, and leaderboard performance.

Ad features to better optimize your business

Of course, once you build a great gaming experience, it's important to get rewarded for your work, which is why we'll also be introducing new features to the AdMob platform. We're making Google Analytics available directly in the AdMob interface, so you can gain deeper insights into how users are interacting with your app. Turning those insights into effective action is vital, so we're excited by the opportunities that in-app purchase ads will offer — enabling you to target users with specific promotions to buy items in your game. Advertising continues to be a core vehicle driving many game developers' success, so we're also bringing you new ways to optimize your ads to earn the most revenue.

Watch the Google Sessions at GDC

Check out the stream from our Google Developer Day sessions at GDC 2014. Learn more about how to reach and engage with hundreds of millions of users on Google Play, build Games that scale in the cloud, grow in-game advertising businesses with AdMob, track revenue with Google Analytics, as well as explore new gaming frontiers, like Glass.

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