AppBrain is trying to make it as easy as possible for you to find the best apps for your Android phone.
Some apps like Google Maps are popular all over the world, but there are also many great apps which are appealing for users in a specific country, or speaking a certain language.
For example the London Tube Status app is very popular in the UK, and not so much in other countries.
To discover these apps we recently launched the app popularity ranking per country.
Today we are excited to announce that we will also make the AppBrain website and app available in a number of different languages, which makes AppBrain even better to browse for local apps.
We started with releasing the German and Dutch site: AppBrain auf Deutsch, AppBrain in Nederlands.
We will release more languages in the near future. Please contact us if you would like to volunteer to translate AppBrain and bring it to your country! (contact@appbrain.com)
Update: We just added the French version: AppBrain en Français
Uwe for the AppBrain team.
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
New ways to find the Android apps you like!
As the Android market now has well over 70,000 apps, finding the apps you want can be hard. Sometimes you know exactly what you want, and then searching is a great way to get your app. But often, you don’t know the exact name of an app you might like, and then it’s more useful to browse around and see what other people like. The Google Android market doesn't allow easy discovery of interesting new apps, because the all-time ranking of apps rarely changes the apps that are on top. The AppBrain hot apps list is a big step in the right direction, but we think browsing for apps could be even better.
Today we’re happy to launch a major upgrade to the AppBrain website, http://www.appbrain.com/. In addition to a cleaner user interface, it features much better ways in which you can browse for Android apps. By using anonymous aggregated user statistics, we are able to provide a number of interesting new ways to browse for apps.
We also made it much easier to find apps that are interesting to people from a specific country. I was happy to now easily find the “Albert Heijn” application from the list of apps most used in the Netherlands, where I’m from. The 15 countries we currently provide most-used lists for are the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Denmark, Hong Kong, Brazil, France, Canada, Spain, and Portugal. Other countries unfortunately don’t have enough users on AppBrain to provide a ranking, but we will add more countries as soon as more people join!
In addition to the new lists, we also enhanced the ways you can filter the selection of apps down to what you want. For instance, the hot apps are now viewable by category, by clicking them on the left side of the screen. In addition to filtering by category, you can also add a filter to only get free, paid, new, updated, or price-reduced apps.
We hope you like the new look of the site and the new ways to browse the Android market!
Mathijs for the AppBrain team.
P.S. If you’re a developer of an Android app and are interested in more advanced stats about your app, check out the AppBrain developer dashboard.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Easier installing of apps for every website!
It's only a month ago we launched the "Fast Web Installer" feature for AppBrain, and we have seen tremendous uptake of it. Many users are enjoying the great experience it adds on top of the traditional AppBrain syncing mechanism. Even CNN quoted yesterday "Get your apps through AppBrain.com".
However, in our opinion apps can never be installed easy enough. I personally don't like how I often find myself discovering an app on a blog or developer's page, and then have to go to www.appbrain.com and find it again to install it with the fast web installer. It still is a much better experience than using a barcode scanner or typing the name of the app again on the phone, but it would still be nice if this can be more efficient.
Today we implemented an extension to the current AppBrain page that is a great alternative: the AppBrain install link.
Let's take the recently updated PayPal app as an example. The page about this app on AppBrain is http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.paypal.android.p2pmobile. This page gives the usual description, screenshots, related apps, user comments and changelog, and the important blue Install button for appbrain users. This page is great as a source of information about the app for a browsing user, but not so suitable as an install link.
For this purpose, we added the install URL which can be obtained by adding "?install" to the app page, so in this case that would be: http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.paypal.android.p2pmobile?install
If PayPal, or a review blog, would put this link on the page about this Android app, it makes available the AppBrain install experience with the best of two other options, the QR code (which is not useful when browsing from the phone), and the direct market link (which is not useful on the desktop):
- For desktop browsers, the traditional application page is shown, but with a large popup that explains how to install either via AppBrain or use a barcode scanner:
- For Android phones, the appbrain page is skipped altogether, and the market page is loaded directly, allowing for an easy install.
As an added benefit for developers, driving installs through this page increases the likelihood that an app will show up on our "Hot apps" list.
We hope many websites will start using this new type of link and make the web an even better place to discover and install Android apps!
Mathijs / AppBrain team.
However, in our opinion apps can never be installed easy enough. I personally don't like how I often find myself discovering an app on a blog or developer's page, and then have to go to www.appbrain.com and find it again to install it with the fast web installer. It still is a much better experience than using a barcode scanner or typing the name of the app again on the phone, but it would still be nice if this can be more efficient.
Today we implemented an extension to the current AppBrain page that is a great alternative: the AppBrain install link.
Let's take the recently updated PayPal app as an example. The page about this app on AppBrain is http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.paypal.android.p2pmobile. This page gives the usual description, screenshots, related apps, user comments and changelog, and the important blue Install button for appbrain users. This page is great as a source of information about the app for a browsing user, but not so suitable as an install link.
For this purpose, we added the install URL which can be obtained by adding "?install" to the app page, so in this case that would be: http://www.appbrain.com/app/com.paypal.android.p2pmobile?install
If PayPal, or a review blog, would put this link on the page about this Android app, it makes available the AppBrain install experience with the best of two other options, the QR code (which is not useful when browsing from the phone), and the direct market link (which is not useful on the desktop):
- For desktop browsers, the traditional application page is shown, but with a large popup that explains how to install either via AppBrain or use a barcode scanner:
- For Android phones, the appbrain page is skipped altogether, and the market page is loaded directly, allowing for an easy install.
As an added benefit for developers, driving installs through this page increases the likelihood that an app will show up on our "Hot apps" list.
We hope many websites will start using this new type of link and make the web an even better place to discover and install Android apps!
Mathijs / AppBrain team.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Is Google starting to filter the Android Market?
One big difference between Android and iPhone is the openness of their respective markets for applications. Censorship of apps for iPhone is a major complaint of users whereas Android apps are supposed to be “uncensored”. Google has had a market content policy (which for instance prohibits “pornography, obscenity, nudity or sexual activity”) since the beginning, but this was barely enforced. The result is that lots of “sexy babes” apps are usually cluttering any look at the "Just In” category in the Android market app.
Last week, we mentioned that one Android developer, “For-side.com Co. Ltd”, had completely disappeared from the Android market along with his 4,000 apps. At the end of last week, another notorious publisher, “StoneJordan”, with another 500 apps, was removed. (If you want to get an idea of the apps involved, a google search will still bring up some outdated information on those apps).
Google occasionally removes apps deemed to be malicious, copyright infringing apps, or for instance YouTube downloaders, but we haven’t seen reports of Google removing hundreds or thousands of apps at a time by pulling a full developer account. Are these two events in the same week just coincidence or a change in direction of Google’s handling of the Android Market? We welcome this new development, as we value quality of apps much more than quantity, but at the same time wonder how far will Google go in enforcing its content policies?
UPDATE 27/7: It seems very unlikely to us that these developers suddenly decide to remove all their apps from the market, as some people suggest. Why would they? And today, another one, "sowallpaper.com", with ~1,500 apps is gone. This means over 6,000 apps removed in less than a weeks time.
See our previous articles on the AppBrain blog for more information.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
What’s in a number? Quality, not quantity is what is needed in the Android market.
Last week, there were a number of tech publications about the number of Android apps available in the Android market. Androlib estimated that there are nearly 100,000 apps, but Google announced last Thursday in their earnings call that the number is actually 70,000. Many people compare this to the number of apps in the iPhone store, which is more than 225,000.
But how relevant is the total number of apps really? On AppBrain, users can upload all the apps they have installed to our servers, and subsequently manage their apps from their computers, or make the list public and share it with their friends. We calculated from 100,000 recently uploaded application lists that the average user has ‘just’ 65 apps installed on their phone.
The question is, are all 70,000 apps roughly equally likely to be installed? The clear answer is no! The following graph shows apps in order of installs among our users.
The top 10 popular apps contain no surprises, here's a list together with the percentage of phones they are installed on:
Google Maps: 99.1%
Facebook: 84.9%
Barcode Scanner: 63.8%
Google Goggles: 50.5%
Astro File Manager: 49.3%
Shazam: 46.7%
Amazon MP3: 46.3%
Google Sky Map: 43.5%
Advanced Task Killer: 37.1%
Pandora: 34.3%
In the graph we added a few random sample apps to get an idea of what’s there. Further down are the official Twitter app, the official eBay app in the top 100, around place 300 our own popular Steamy Window app, and further down around place 1,000 the Gentle Alarm (a paid app) and around 5,000 a snow live wallpaper.
Out of all the installed apps on phones of AppBrain users, the 5,500 most popular apps were each installed on more than 0.1% of the phones. In other words, the other 64,500 apps (92% of the total) have an install base of less than 0.1% of all phones.
In our eyes, the problem of the Android market is clearly not that there’s too few apps. Rather, the problem is finding the apps you really want from the huge set that’s available. Popularity lists like the Android market provides don’t really solve the problem, as not all good apps are popular with a big audience. And there's a lot of low quality apps among the less popular ones too.
We took a first step towards solving this problem when we launched an algorithm that subtly hides apps that are very likely to be low quality, back in March. At that time, about 30% of the apps were hidden in this way.
In the meantime, the problem seems to have become much bigger. The following graph shows the number of apps in the AppBrain catalogue over time, along with the low quality app number. The algorithm still uses the same criteria, but now flags nearly 50% of apps.
The decrease around July 10th is not an error. One Android developer, “For-side.com Co. Ltd” suddenly removed all its apps around that time (or maybe he was removed by Google?). This developer had more than 4,000 apps listed, which were clearly autogenerated, and were badly rated by Android users, and were already picked up as such by our algorithm.
We are working hard on making it even easier to find the best apps in the Android haystack, and will soon launch a number of exciting app discovery features using analysis similar to the one in this blogpost.
So stay tuned, have a good summer and happy app browsing!
Mathijs for the AppBrain team.
But how relevant is the total number of apps really? On AppBrain, users can upload all the apps they have installed to our servers, and subsequently manage their apps from their computers, or make the list public and share it with their friends. We calculated from 100,000 recently uploaded application lists that the average user has ‘just’ 65 apps installed on their phone.
The question is, are all 70,000 apps roughly equally likely to be installed? The clear answer is no! The following graph shows apps in order of installs among our users.
Google Maps: 99.1%
Facebook: 84.9%
Barcode Scanner: 63.8%
Google Goggles: 50.5%
Astro File Manager: 49.3%
Shazam: 46.7%
Amazon MP3: 46.3%
Google Sky Map: 43.5%
Advanced Task Killer: 37.1%
Pandora: 34.3%
In the graph we added a few random sample apps to get an idea of what’s there. Further down are the official Twitter app, the official eBay app in the top 100, around place 300 our own popular Steamy Window app, and further down around place 1,000 the Gentle Alarm (a paid app) and around 5,000 a snow live wallpaper.
Out of all the installed apps on phones of AppBrain users, the 5,500 most popular apps were each installed on more than 0.1% of the phones. In other words, the other 64,500 apps (92% of the total) have an install base of less than 0.1% of all phones.
In our eyes, the problem of the Android market is clearly not that there’s too few apps. Rather, the problem is finding the apps you really want from the huge set that’s available. Popularity lists like the Android market provides don’t really solve the problem, as not all good apps are popular with a big audience. And there's a lot of low quality apps among the less popular ones too.
We took a first step towards solving this problem when we launched an algorithm that subtly hides apps that are very likely to be low quality, back in March. At that time, about 30% of the apps were hidden in this way.
In the meantime, the problem seems to have become much bigger. The following graph shows the number of apps in the AppBrain catalogue over time, along with the low quality app number. The algorithm still uses the same criteria, but now flags nearly 50% of apps.
We are working hard on making it even easier to find the best apps in the Android haystack, and will soon launch a number of exciting app discovery features using analysis similar to the one in this blogpost.
So stay tuned, have a good summer and happy app browsing!
Mathijs for the AppBrain team.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
The 2010 FIFA World Cup™: track it on your Android
The FIFA soccer world cup 2010 has started today!
The internet provides a huge number of ways to stay up to date. In recent days, a number of sites have paid attention to this great event, for instance the Official Google Blog and Techcrunch.
However, not all internet media pay attention to the potential of Android apps. What's easier to keep track of the upcoming matches and latest stats than a nice app on your device that's always right in your pocket?
We want to draw your attention to the great number of Android apps that provides information on the world cup.
A search for "fifa worldcup" returns no less than 90 apps on AppBrain. My personal favorite is "2010 World Cup". I like that app because it even works without data connection, but your needs may be different. AppBrain makes it really easy to browse all those world cup apps, and lets you figure out which one you want before downloading it to your phone.
We hope you have a lot of fun in these exciting soccer times, and may the best team win!
Mathijs, Software Engineer
Thursday, May 20, 2010
Easy installation of Android apps from the web
Today at Google I/O, Google pre-announced a web-based Android market. It will have very tight integration with your Android device, allowing installation of apps on your phone by a single click from your desktop's browser.
We are very glad to see these developments. With AppBrain we already provide the most seamless experience currently available to find and install apps. We hope that the mechanisms Google will use in their new Market will be open and therefore able to improve AppBrain even further. Currently it is impossible to automatically install an app from the market, it always needs a few clicks from the user.
Unfortunately it is unclear when the new market will actually be launched, and whether it will be available to phones running older versions of Android than the today announced 2.2 (Froyo). In the meantime, we would like to invite you to try AppBrain.
Try our website with fast and relevant search, daily and weekly hot apps, and personalized recommendations now! Also check out the function to link your Twitter or Facebook accounts and discover which of your friends are already using our service and see what apps they have installed!
After syncing with your phone, you can share all the apps you have installed just like Gina Trapani and Leo Laporte did before.
See this great AppVee youtube video to get further explanation of how it works:
Have fun finding, installing and sharing your best Android apps!
Mathijs, AppBrain team
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