Google Play celebrates 25bn downloads with discount on top apps

One of the biggest players in the smartphone market is Google with its Android operating system. The Google Play store for Android devices has recently hit 25 billion downloads and the search giant is holding a massive discount on Google Play to celebrate.

The top rated games on Google Play are going to be on discount and will be available for 25 cents (roughly Rs. 13). Some of the apps on sale include Angry Birds Space Premium, Granny Smith, Draw Something and Tasks, among others. The apps that are currently on sale can be seen here. The company is also promoting special collections at special prices like 25 movies you must own, 25 banned books, 25 albums that changed the world and the store’s 25 top selling magazines, though these services aren’t available in the Indian Google Play store yet. “We look forward to the next 25 billion,” Google said in its official blog post.

Celebrates 25 billion app downloads!

It was recently revealed that India’s listing in the official list of countries where developers could register as certified Google Checkout Merchants was short lived. Pluggd.in’s Ashish Sinha writes, “So for India based Android app developers, things are back to what it was earlier – i.e. you cannot sell paid apps in the Play store (some workaround here). We have asked Google to update us on the final status (or was it some drunken employee updating the support page?). For sure, Google needs to revisit this strategy. If not, Microsoft is going to snatch away these Android app developers with a better integrated strategy (it’s already happening).”

More from News & Analysis

What is the US HIRE Bill and why is India’s $250-billion IT sector worried? Is the internet dead? What's this theory that OpenAI's Sam Altman says might be true?

Earlier, Indian developers needed to go to a country where Google Checkout merchants are allowed, such as the US, and register a local bank account in the name of a US resident in order to sell apps on the Google Play Store. With reports about India featuring on that list, it did seem as if troubles were over. Now, however, things stand the way they were. 

Smartphone apps are serious business, though developers of Android apps were left in limbo. In India, developers were only allowed to publish free apps, and this had limited the potential for innovative apps because of lack of incentive.

Reports quoted P R Rajendran, Director of Next Wave Multimedia, a Chennai based company as saying, “We have lived with this condition for some time now where we literally run two companies, and are subject to dual taxation". He added further that, “This is a welcome move on the part of Google”. Rajendran’s company was reported as having published more than ten apps on both Apple iTunes as well as Google Play.

Google recently launched in India services that were previously unavailable in the country. Earlier this month, Google launched its voice guided turn-by-turn Navigation service in India. Google Maps Navigation makes good use of the long-standing features of Google Maps for mobile. The features include powerful Google search and voice search capabilities, which allow users to find local destinations by typing or speaking an address or business name.

Voice search on Google Maps Navigation is only available in English yet. Google’s search tools go a distance in assisting the user. For instance, ambiguous queries and words that are misspelled are corrected and clarified without requiring the user to enter an exact address, and the optimal route from origin to destination is quickly calculated.