AndroidMarket Archive

  • Android Market is down, showing zero apps (update: fixed)

    Android Market is down, showing zero apps (update: fixed)

    Posted on June 23, 2010 | No Comments
    Look, we know that checking the Android Market for updates its a nervous habit during brief periods of downtime for many of us -- but for now, you're going to have to go back to chewing your nails or tapping your fingers on the table, because the Market's down. Well, that's only partially true -- you can still get into the Market app on your phone without any errors, you just won't see any apps in there, which renders it pretty useless by our estimation. Hang on, don't panic -- we imagine this won't last long.

    [Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

    Update: It's still down for us on a Froyo Nexus One, but if you take a gander through our comments section, you'll see that a lot of folks are having no trouble at all -- so it's probably based on your location, your devices, and your operating system. As far as we can tell, it's not restricted to Froyo since we've received a number of tips on the issue and we're hearing of some Droids that can't see apps. Keep the observations coming, folks!

    Update 2: Google just reached out to us to let us know that it should be fixed and that the total outage was somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 minutes. They're apologizing for the inconvenience -- but with the Droid X being announced today, can you really hold a grudge?

    Android Market is down, showing zero apps (update: fixed) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Jun 2010 16:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • QIK admits Evo 4G launch problems after 20x increase on server load

    QIK admits Evo 4G launch problems after 20x increase on server load

    Posted on June 7, 2010 | No Comments
    While record sales are generally a desireable thing, that one-time spike in demand can leave service providers scrambling to cope on launch day. Evo 4G owners are well aware of this after noticing one of the handset's flagship features -- Qik video calling -- was unavailable in the Android Market on Friday. After correcting the issue, Qik then had to pull the app after users experienced intermittent service failures resulting from what Qik calls "an unprecedented 20x" workload increase on its servers. The Qik team is scrambling to provision more capacity and expects to have things under control "shortly."

    QIK admits Evo 4G launch problems after 20x increase on server load originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 07 Jun 2010 07:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • DoubleTwist adds some polish to Android with new media player app

    DoubleTwist adds some polish to Android with new media player app

    Posted on June 3, 2010 | No Comments
    Peruse the Android Market this morrow and you might come across a hot new addition from the folks at DoubleTwist. That's right, the iTunes-aping desktop sync manager has gone native on the Android platform and early feedback on its media player implementation has been positive. The free music and video player app does that whole seamless thing quite well, apparently, interfacing directly with your Windows or Mac computerino and porting over relevant playlists, ratings and media. A widget and other features are coming soon, though you'll likely have to pay for them, given the "free for a limited time" note on the download page. Better get it while the gettin's good.

    DoubleTwist adds some polish to Android with new media player app originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 Jun 2010 05:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Skype Mobile with video support coming to Android Market later this year?

    Skype Mobile with video support coming to Android Market later this year?

    Posted on May 28, 2010 | No Comments
    Skype's PR folks have been unusually loquacious today, as they've responded to a query about whether HTC's EVO 4G would get a Skype client with a deep and meaningful forward-looking statement, underpinned by a promise of an Android app "for all consumers globally to download regardless of carriers." This universally available addition to the Market should arrive "later this year," but what's important about it is that it's preceded by a lengthy spiel about Skype's ambition to "set the bar on mobile video calling," which it also intends to do this year. Does this necessarily mean that Skype video calling is coming to Android in time for us to wish granny happy Hanukkah over video chat? No. Is it a well constructed insinuation to that effect? Hell yes. Read the full statement at the source, or find the juiciest excerpt after the break.

    [Thanks, Jeremy]

    Continue reading Skype Mobile with video support coming to Android Market later this year?

    Skype Mobile with video support coming to Android Market later this year? originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 28 May 2010 06:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Google adding over-the-air app installation and iTunes streaming to Android

    Google adding over-the-air app installation and iTunes streaming to Android

    Posted on May 20, 2010 | No Comments
    Sure sure, Froyo is great and all, but Google just blew our minds with two previews of upcoming Android features at I/O: OTA application installation and remote music streaming. OTA installation is just as simple as you'd expect -- after browsing to an app on your desktop, you can push it to your phone and install it with just a single click, all done over the air. Interestingly, Google also showed music being purchased and transferred from Android Marketplace in the same way, which could indicate a deeper push towards music integration, or just be a nice demo. Either way, it's pretty slick stuff -- the fewer wires we have to carry, the better.

    The remote music streaming is a little crazier: Google bought a company called Simplify Media, which makes a bit of desktop software that can stream all your music directly from iTunes to your phone. The demo was quite slick -- you just open the app and push "all," and all your music is instantly available. Whether or not this'll work over 3G or be limited to the local network is still up in the air, but we're dying to try it out.

    Google adding over-the-air app installation and iTunes streaming to Android originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 May 2010 12:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • HTC debuts widgets for Sense-equipped Android phones

    HTC debuts widgets for Sense-equipped Android phones

    Posted on December 17, 2009 | No Comments
    HTC was already in the Android software game by virtue of the fact that it drops a fully-customized UI and widget suite on some of its models, but this is new: they've migrated over to the Market. Now, what'd be insanely awesome here is if you could, say, buy Sense for $9.99 and install it on any Android device, but yeah, not so much -- what we've actually got here is a four-pack of free widgets that are compatible with the Hero and Droid Eris. Dice, Today in History, Tip Calculator, and Battery are each downloadable individually; none are particularly exciting or different than what's already available in the Market, but they've all got that famous HTC high style and the exclusivity of knowing that Motorola, Acer, Samsung, and Huawei riffraff can't use them. All four are available now.

    HTC debuts widgets for Sense-equipped Android phones originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Dec 2009 13:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Google downsizes AndroLib’s Android Market app count by a few grand

    Google downsizes AndroLib’s Android Market app count by a few grand

    Posted on December 16, 2009 | No Comments
    A stout 20,000 apps in the Android Market, eh? Not so much, according to none other than Google itself -- which, with all due respect to original counter AndroLib -- has a little more street cred here, especially when they're deflating the numbers rather than inflating them. A spokesperson for the company told us this afternoon that "there are currently more than 16,000 free and paid apps in Android Market" without specifying paid-to-free breakdown or differences among regional Markets, so we don't much basis for figuring out where Google's number comes from; we'd count it ourselves, but we've... uh, we've got dinner plans this evening. So until someone can conclusively prove otherwise, we're going to say that the Market has yet to crack the 20K mark in any region where the Market operates -- not to say you can't find a fair share of goodies among the 16,000 that are out there.

    Google downsizes AndroLib's Android Market app count by a few grand originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • T-Mobile Top Picks brands the Android Market, magenta-style

    T-Mobile Top Picks brands the Android Market, magenta-style

    Posted on December 15, 2009 | No Comments
    T-Mobile's been keen on making its Android customers aware of particular apps since the launch of the myTouch 3G and the App Pack, but there's a problem -- App Pack is its own app, which is kinda unwieldy when you've already got the Market sitting there. That's where Top Picks appears to come into play, the carrier's next-gen effort to inject some of its opinions into its users' app selection process by integrating directly with the Market, much as Verizon has done on the Droid. Customers can expect to get updated with Top Picks "over the next couple of weeks," though it requires Android 1.6 -- we're guessing that means no CLIQ or Behold II love for the time being.

    T-Mobile Top Picks brands the Android Market, magenta-style originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • Android Market hits 20,000 apps, over 60 percent free

    Android Market hits 20,000 apps, over 60 percent free

    Posted on December 15, 2009 | No Comments
    Quantity rarely equals quality, of course, but it's still fairly notable that the Android Market has now managed to top 20,000 apps just a little over a year after it opened its doors -- Apple's App Store had over 50,000 apps a year into its existence, for those keeping track. Even more interesting, however, is the distribution of free and paid apps in the Market. According to AndroLib, fully 62.2% of the apps available are completely free, compared to just 37.8% that are paid apps. That's in stark contrast to the App Store, which now has over 100,000 individual apps, of which (by some recent counts) a hefty 77% are paid applications -- although only 30% of total App Store downloads are for paid apps. What does it all mean? Well, that's open for debate. But one thing's for sure: the rest of the app store contenders are going to have to work some special pie chart magic to come out looking good in this battle.

    Android Market hits 20,000 apps, over 60 percent free originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  • T-Mobile rolling out Android Market carrier billing — on some phones

    T-Mobile rolling out Android Market carrier billing — on some phones

    Posted on December 14, 2009 | No Comments
    The good news is that you don't need to hook up that shady Google character (whoever that is) with your credit card information anymore when you're looking to buy paid Android apps from the Market if you're on T-Mobile -- the bad news, though, is that only 1.6-powered phones are getting the update at this point. Over the course of December, the carrier's going to be pushing a new version of the Android Market on the G1 and myTouch 3G that lets folks charge purchases straight to their phone bills, and -- in line with Google's existing policy -- you'll have a 24-hour trial period before the billing actually goes through. For the time being, CLIQ and Behold II users are being left out in the cold, a sign that carrier billing is joined at the hip with the revamped Market that was pushed out with Donut. That sucks, but we suppose you could look at that one of two ways: either it'll end up getting back-ported to 1.5, or -- more intriguingly -- 1.6 will end up happening sooner or later for those guys.


    T-Mobile rolling out Android Market carrier billing -- on some phones originally appeared on Engadget Mobile on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 04:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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