How a new app store would help Android

Searching for the right app on Google Play is no fun task. Many of the apps abuse permissions on our smartphones, others clutter us with advertising, and too many updates and notifications also disrupt the experience. But, hey, that's the price to pay for downloading a program without paying.

Unfortunately, the rating system does not help you search for something in the Play Store. The famous "click farms", so famous in Bangladesh, India, Egypt and other countries (and masterfully portrayed in the second season of the Silicon Valley series), make apps always rank well, between four and five stars. So, a little money is enough to appear in the list of the best rated, which does not necessarily mean that the software is good.

Many apps abuse permissions on our smartphones

The problem: In the Play Store are located next to the many bad apps, all the good apps. And in existing alternative stores, the competition is not the ones that usually give Google a tired platform.

Alternatives to PlayStore

Amazon App may be the biggest competitor to Google Play. Unfortunately, the number of apps available is severely restricted: around 600,000. And most of them are optimized for Amazon devices, which work with outdated versions of Android.

In addition, the Amazon store has other weaknesses. App updates take a long time to arrive and are not automatically installed, so you must confirm one by one. This is because Android classifies the applications of this platform as an "unknown source", which makes sense for security reasons. Moreover, this is not exactly bad if your smartphone has storage problems or is already somewhat slow.

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Amazon App Store: Manual App Updates / AndroidPIT

Incidentally, point to Google Play: your fake app identification system is very easy. And automatic malware detection is also fast enough to prevent malicious applications from spreading too quickly or lingering in the store. And even Google's cooperation with independent security companies works very well.

Each app in the Play Store must be verified before it is published.

However, the fact that an approval process based only on the "machine" is not good enough. Currently, Google and other security companies have been working on algorithms for deep learning, which accurately parse the source code of the apps. For example, if an application does not require any interface to access the SMS function, it is already under suspicion.

But while this helps prevent attacks, in the medium term this will not solve the problem of the high number of bad apps.

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Google Play already has quantity. Missing quality / AndroidPIT

A good app store has an editorial team that monitors incoming applications and tests their usability. As a result, app developers need to follow clear design guidelines. Even better if they have the power to prevent bad software from being published and not just the ones that pose a danger.

A good app store would have autonomous publishers to block bad apps

Therefore, if an application is not compliant with usage guidelines and not editorially good enough, developers would have a deadline to make improvements. If so, he could log into Google Play. Otherwise, you will sell your product elsewhere.

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There are occasional themed pages on PlayStore, but Apple has a lot more ANDROIDPIT

App Store curation works surprisingly badly. Since Google knows almost everything in our lives, it could well have a more efficient referral system in that regard. Apple, at this time, does a much better job. Your most enjoyable catalog to search, including by categories and publishers do a more efficient job, pointing out high quality apps.

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App curation needs to be more efficient at Play Store / ANDROIDPIT

Huawei App Market could be a dangerous rival for Google Play

With hundreds of millions of customers in China alone, Huawei App Market – the Chinese-brand app store – could be a competitor with huge potential for Google Play. Where the Google store is not available, competitors can flourish. And the P9 s manufacturer's platform needs a slap on its sloppy look.

Huawei's app store run by Changzhu Li, vice president of the company's mobile business division. Like the Apple store, each application is manually verified before it is published. And those that are considered inappropriate are kept out of the catalog. And the platform already has plans to expand beyond the Chinese market, with Europe in sight.

Opinion by Eric Ferrari-Herrmann

The number of bad apps on the Play Store gives the impression that Google doesn't care much about the platform.

And that makes perfect sense, as Huawei's share of the smartphone market is growing. And with that, Android users could begin to see it as an option to Google Play in a few years. Why spend hours and hours researching a plethora of apps in the Google store, if competition would deliver better results, based more on quality than quantity?

Android needs a new Play Store

The number of apps in the Play Store is already big enough. If the goal was to surpass the Apple store, the goal has already been achieved. Now Google needs to focus on curating what it has inside its platform. Because if the number of bad apps keeps increasing, the user's perception is that Android will not improve. And, iOS has one of the most powerful arguments for getting green robot users to migrate to the iPhone once and for all.

. (tagsToTranslate) google play (t) store (t) apps (t) Android (t) market (t) alternative (t) apps (t) smartphones (t) tablets (t) play store