During the Google sponsored Google I/O Conference, the folks behind Google Play revealed a few new things about Google’s app store. Specifically, the company revealed that people can now buy TV shows, movies and magazines directly from Google Play. Previously, users can only rent videos from Google Play.
With the new functionality of Google Play, purchases are now officially opened to users. For example, for magazines, users can buy individual magazine issues or buy a subscription to receive new issues when it is released. As a way to introduce this new feature, some of the top tier magazines will be offering free 14-day trials. Google has also released an Android Magazines app as a companion piece to this new feature. The Magazines app can also be downloaded from Google Play.
Google has cited a lot of impressive numbers to show how successful Google Play has been. The store, which started out as Android Market, has already logged in 20 billion app installs since its launch. Google says there are more than 600,000 apps and games available in the store and 50 percent of these apps use in-app billing.
Google has also announced that app updates will be cut down by two thirds in the next few months. This means downloading updates will only entail downloading the new files that have changed and not the whole app itself. This is great news for users, especially those who still have to contend with limited bandwidth.
Originally posted on June 27, 2012 @ 9:15 pm