Google rolled out a new design for Google Play on Wednesday, showing some extra love to tablet apps.
Google Play's recommendations -- some of which are based on a user's Google+ account -- will now surface apps designed for tablets in its top app charts, Google announced at its Google I/O developer's conference.
Engineering Director Chris Yerga said the new Google Play will make it easier for users to find the apps they want.
At today's Google I/O developers' conference in San Francisco, Google announced that it would release its own variant of the previously unveiled Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone.
For the most part, the device will remain largely the same. It will feature 4G LTE and 16GB of storage space.
However, the handset will offer a skinless Android 4.2 Jelly Bean Nexus experience, it will come with its bootloader already unlocked, and users will receive system updates as they come in.
This unlocked GS4 version will be available starting June 26 and will work on AT&T and T-Mobile … Read more
Sundar Pichai, head of Google's Android and Chrome operations, said at the company's developers conference that users activated 400 million Android devices in 2012 and 100 million in 2011.
"The momentum has been breathtaking since then," Pichai said.
And Hugo Barra, vice president of product management, said Google Play has just passed 48 billion app installations, with 2.5 billion installations in the last month alone.
Google is hosting Google I/O, … Read more
Samsung took home almost all of the profits generated in the Android smartphone world last quarter, according to a report today from Strategy Analytics.
For the first quarter, global Android smartphone profits totaled $5.3 billion. Samsung captured a hefty 95 percent, or $5.1 billion, of that amount. Strategy Analytics senior analyst Woody Oh pinned Samsung's success on an "efficient supply chain, sleek products, and crisp marketing."
Second place LG Electronics snagged 2.5 percent of Android's global earnings and is far behind Samsung in the volume of its smartphone devices. Samsung could even use … Read more
Rumored to be something between a Jelly Bean and a slice of Key Lime Pie, Android 4.3 is currently appearing in search results on the Android developers' site.
Numerous excerpts in the results reference "Security Enhancements in Android 4.3"
Click through any of those results and you'll find a page with no apparent mentions of the new Android update, although it is hidden in the HTML. Click through the link in that tag and you get a 404. Dead end. Scavenger hunt over.
Guess we have to wait for the expected unveil of the update … Read more
Prepaid smartphone sales are starting to become more popular, according to new data from market researcher NPD Group.
NPD released on Wednesday a study that found 32 percent of all smartphone purchases came from prepaid devices during the first quarter. During the same period in 2012, that figure stood at 21 percent.
Although "postpaid" devices, which are subsidized but can lock customers into a long-term agreement, are still most popular, NPD believes the prepaid jump is due to consumers finding more value in older devices that can still hold up well in today's crowded smartphone space.
"… Read more
AT&T seems perfectly willing to let Google blaze the trail when it comes to fiber-optic deployment.
Google has said it plans to deploy its fiber network in select neighborhoods in Austin, Texas. AT&T said it would also like to build a fiber network -- under the same kinds of terms and conditions.
"We will probably piggyback on the rules and terms and condition that Google received in Austin and do our own build in Austin," CEO Randall Stephenson said Wednesday at a J.P. Morgan tech investor conference in Boston, which offered a live … Read more
T-Mobile on Monday boosted the upfront cost of the iPhone by $50 to $149.99 for the 16GB version, which T-Mobile Financial Chief Braxton Carter said Wednesday was the company's plan the entire time. However, T-Mobile didn't say at launch that the lower price was temporary. And the increase -- which brings the total cost for the phone to $629.99 after two years of $20 a month payments -- comes only a month after the iPhone became available at T-Mobile.
"When we look at the overall landscape, there's no … Read more
It's time to find out the raison d'etre of the Chromebook Pixel. I refuse to believe that all that high-end hardware is meant to run a really fast Web browser, and I have a conspiracy theory about the secret mission of the Chromebook Pixel. I'm going to be looking for clues coming out of Google I/O this week to see if they support my theory.
I'll confess that I'm infatuated with the Pixel. I shouldn't really like the world's most overpriced and overengineered Web browser -- that's truly what the Pixel … Read more
PayPal is taking a major leap into the payment-processing space: it's eliminating fees for businesses that sign up for its service.
The news was announced on Tuesday by PayPal president David Marcus, who said that any business that dumps its old point-of-sale (POS) services in favor of PayPal Here -- the company's mobile-payment-processing service -- or another POS offering that integrates PayPal's technology, it'll wave fees through the rest of the year.
"We will offer free credit, debit card, check, and of course PayPal processing for the remainder of the year to any qualifying U.… Read more
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