It’s hard to believe but the Google Play Store is just one. Yes one year ago today, Google flipped the switch and rebranded the Android Market to the Google Play Store. When Google unveiled the Play Store it combined its app, music, movies and book stores.
To celebrate, Google is offering discounts, gift cards and exclusive in-game content. The deals range from discounted and free books as well as new Android-themed additions to some games. Deals seem to differ depending on the country and region. The deals are expected to change every day over the next 7 days.
Google is known for offering discounts on the Play Store frequently especially when they hit a milestone like 25 billion downloads, as well as holiday sales like Cyber Weekend and End of Summer sales.
When we took a look at the deal page for India it seemed to be very disappointing with just a few discounts and additions for in-app purchases. We could not find any discounts on Books which Google launched just last week in India. We do hope the deals get better as the week goes by.
You can find the deal page here.
Google has also revealed a video where developers speak about the offers they have planned for the week ahead.
Android 4.0+ Finally Overtakes Gingerbread
On the same day that the Play Store turns one, Google announces the latest adoption rates of the different versions of Android. Though Gingerbread is still the largest user group with 44% of the total devices that accessed Google Play within a 14-day period ending in the beginning of March 2013,its share is constantly decreasing when compared to previous months. Older versions such as Froyo 2.2, Eclair 2.0-2.1 and Donut 1.6 has a user base of 9.7% combined. Meanwhile, the share of Jelly Bean 4.1-4.2 increased from 13.6% in February to 16.5% in March. Ice-cream Sandwich is on 28.9% of devices. It is to be noted that these figures are only for devices which have accessed the Google Play Store. There are many studies which state that most Indian don’t have have a data connection on their smartphones so these figures are most likely to be skewed. But it is definitely good to know that the share of Android 4.0+ has finally overtaken Gingerbread.
