New Android Market's files hint at Google music store

A redesigned Android Market has hinted that Google's plans for its own music store may still be on the cards. Images for section headers include the expected app and movies sections but also a set of currently unused orange music icons. Android and Me's explorer didn't locate other giveaways, but much of the content from within a given section downloads when the app runs.

Google hasn't confirmed any of the plans.

When Google launched Music Beta, it publicly abandoned store plans under claims that labels were holding it back from doing what it wanted. It's now known that labels wanted cash advances for the full-fledged cloud music service and other payment terms that Google wasn't willing to pay. Placeholders for a music store could just be carryovers from earlier attempts but could also signal that Google has dropped its earlier views or will have a more limited store.

Google might have felt compelled to have a store after seeing the launches of iTunes Match and iTunes in the Cloud. After awhile of lagging behind in cloud services, Apple not only introduced simplified device downloads but a cloud music service better than what Google offered. To keep Music Beta free, Google limited its strategy to manual uploading and to steer listeners to other stores. iTunes Match costs $25 but only needs manual uploads for songs it doesn't recognize and makes storage cap exemptions for tracks someone already owns.

By Electronista Staff

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ASUS to step up fight with 4.5m Android tablets in late 2011

ASUS' tablet shipments are due to surge enough that it may become one of the largest competitors in the field, touchscreen panel tipsters slipped out late Thursday. Once hit by chronic shortages, the company's shipments of Android tablets like the Eee Pad Transformer should reach 1.2 million to 1.5 million in the summer and only scale up further in the fall, according to Digitimes. Orders have supposedly jumped to include as many as four to 4.5 million tablets in the last six months of 2011.

The company had only set targets of shipping two million tablets the entire year and might itself have been caught by surprise. A 51.7 percent percent surge in ASUS' manufacturing partner Pegatron's revenue during June might have been directly attributable to better than expected ASUS tablet sales.

Some of the increase will likely come from extra tablet models shipping at the same time, such as the MeMo and Eee Pad Slider. ASUS is often touted as one of the few early Android 3 tablet designers to have stood out from the pack with devices that undercut the iPad on price but still compete well on features. The Eee Pad Transformer costs $399 but still has a 10-inch IPS-based display and unique tricks like its hybrid battery and notebook dock.

Analysts from Nomura just on Thursday portrayed ASUS as one of the largest competitors in the next year and suggested that it could even outperform heavyweights such as Motorola and RIM in the tablet arena. Apple is still expected to dominate and ship several times more iPads than ASUS will tablets but may not have the extremely wide lead it has had in the past.

By Electronista Staff

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Google profit up 36%, at 550,000 Android activations per day

Google triggered a share buying spree on Thursday afternoon as it reported results well past expectations for its spring quarter. The company's net profit surged 36 percent to hit $2.51 billion based on a record high $9.03 billion of pure revenue. Much of the rise came from not just paid clicks on ads, which shot up 18 percent, but a 12 percent boost to the average cost per click that made each hit more valuable.

The search giant didn't say how much of the revenue was pure search versus elements related to Android or other platforms. Its self-developed operating systems are usually licensed away for free, but it can often gauge how many ad hits came from Android users versus rivals like iOS or on the desktop.

About 2,500 new people came onboard the company in just the three months, nearly fifth (450) from the ITA takeover.

The spring was the first quarter in which co-founder Larry Page could steer the company after Eric Schmidt moved to an executive chairman role. Many had been watching to see if he would improve the business, which near the end of Schmidt's CEO tenure had been lagging. Page is known to have shaken up large parts of Google's structure and worked to streamline it without cutting jobs.

Mobile played one of the most important parts in the spring. Google said it was already at 550,000 activations per day, up from 500,000 per day. It also now has about 135 million devices in existence and over 250,000 active Android apps. The company was one of the first to have a real, commercial NFC mobile payment system in place with Google Wallet.

Some of its performance has been muted, though, as Android tablets struggled to take off despite many presumptions Google would automatically repeat its success in phones. Research firms have also noted that iPhones are regaining ground after many months of very rapid Android growth.

Investors saw Google getting slightly less than they had hoped for in profits but were nonetheless excited enough to send Google stock soaring over 10 percent in after-hours trading.

By Electronista Staff

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Verizon iPhone, iPad 2 pulling developers away from Android?

The Verizon iPhone and iPad 2 launches may have pushed many developers to refocus their resources on iOS rather than Android, according to numbers collected by Flurry. Developers creating new apps using Flurry Analytics showed a tendency to step away from the Android platform, which represented 36 percent of new project starts in the first quarter of the year before dropping to 28 percent in the second quarter.

As developers showed waning interest in Android, new project starts for iPhone apps rose from 54 percent to 57 percent of Flurry Analytics total numbers for the first and second quarters, respectively. The iPad also showed gains, jumping from 10 percent to 15 percent in the same period.

"Of note, this drop in Android developer support represents the second quarter-over-over slide, which follows a year of significant, steady growth for the Google-built OS," Flurry wrote in a blog post. "Over the course of 2010, Android developer support had climbed steadily each quarter, peaking at 39% in Q4 2010."

Flurry suggests the iPhone launch on Verizon was one of the contributing factors, as Apple's smartphone finally went head-to-head with Android devices on another major carrier in the US. "With the iPhone finally launched on Verizon, the pendulum appears to have swung back more in favor of iPhone over Android development," Flurry opines.

The iPad 2 launch is said to have further tightened Apple's control of the tablet market, providing yet another reason for developers to focus resources on iOS rather than Android.

"With developers pinched on both sides of the revenue and cost equation, Google must tack aggressively at this stage of the race to ensure that Apple doesn?t continue to take its developer-support wind," Flurry says.