With all the hype about the Nexus One today, and knowing that I am still in the market for a cell phone, I wanted to see what all they might have that would make this more interesting. The problem is going through the web interface of the Android Market Place simply stinks – only top featured apps, no browsing capability – no search – and all this from Search Engine King Google.
I am not the only one to notice this; Android developers are also complaining about it, the developers are complaining about this as well in an article from GigaOm.
The low download volumes and lack of profits speak to the fact that app discovery isn’t easy in the Android Marketplace. Having used Android Marketplace for many months now, I have to say the experience is sub-par. Eighty-two percent of those surveyed felt that the Android Marketplace’s design makes it difficult for apps to be noticed. As I pointed out earlier, special marketplaces being set up by phone companies is only going to muddy the waters. Source:GigaOm
The only problem with the GigaOm article is that they quote a 30 respondent questionnaire, and other article shows that there are a huge number of projects ramping up to take advantage of the app store. Unfortunately though, this is the current landing page for the Android Market Place.
That isn’t going to work, especially if you want to browse and see what Android offers before you go splurge a few hundred dollars on a device. 20K apps is ok, but if you can’t see them, you can’t download them, and consumers will wonder what they bought.
Surprisingly this is a Google effort that looks like it needs some serious work. Normally when dealing with any Google system even in Beta there is a certain amount of polish. Even Google Wave had polish if it was confusing and painful to use. Realistically, and this is where Apple tends to get it right, the User Interface is huge, and while it might look good from the Google Phone of choice, from a web visitor viewpoint the web site is just plain old sad. Apple at least lets you tool around the App Store, although with the hundreds of thousands of apps they have navigating them might be difficult, it is not as difficult as the Google Android Store.
Seriously – Google needs to get this one together and make it easy to search, find, purchase, and all from the web.
(Cross-posted @ TechWag)
You’re right about the quality of the Android Market UI design: it is very limited!
But you should also evaluate it from an Android phone point-of-view. If you take a look at this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ma9Xh67Eyo, you’ll see the phone user experience is much better. Although the search feature is not demoed in the video, it’s available in the Market application.
This does not solve your wish to parse the application catalog before purchasing one Android device but you can expect a better experience once you’ll get one 😉
A+, Dom
Seeing as I do own an Android phone (HTC Dream). I did go online today to see the app store online. I did find it very limited. however the Search feature for the Phone is much better. And if you do use the search. It pulls up what you are looking for. Kinda like a google search but just for the apps. Found a lot of great ones on there too. And quite a few apps are just like the Iphone ones as well. (Light saber, WoW Armory, ect,) I list those as they are the ones my friends have and I found to just combat how great there phone is.
iPhone FANBOY
OMG THE ANDROID MARKET ONLINE SUCKS OMGOMGOMGOMG. EVEN THOUGH YOU CAN’T EVEN BUY ANYTHING OFF OF IT. ONLY ON YOUR PHONE WHICH IS THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS DURRRRRPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP