Google overhauls Android app publishing console

Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) unveiled a revamped version of its Google Play Developer Console, promising a streamlined Android app publishing flow, new language options and new user ratings statistics.

Highlights of the Google Play Developer Console include a new interface designed for easier navigation and search, as well as expanded insight into consumer feedback.

"You'll see new statistics about your user ratings: a graph showing changes over time, for both the all-time average user rating and new user ratings that come in on a certain day," explained Google Play team members Eva-Lotta Lamm, Riccardo Govoni and Ellie Powers on the Android Developers Blog. "As with other statistics, you'll be able to break down the data by device, country, language, carrier, Android version and app version. For example, after optimizing your app for tablets, you could track your ratings on popular tablets."

Also new: An overhauled app publishing workflow. "You can start with either an APK or an app name, and you can save before you have all of the information," the Google Play team states. "You can also now see differences between the new and old versions of an app, making it easy to catch unintentional changes before you publish a new version to your users." In addition, developers can publish Android app listings in 49 languages--once a change is saved in the new Developer Console, consumers have the option of viewing an automatic translation of the listing on the Web, an enhancement coming to mobile devices in the near future.

The revamped Google Play Developer Console can be found here. "Please note that we're not quite done yet, so the following advanced features are not yet supported in the new Google Play Developer Console: multiple APK support, APK Expansion Files and announcements," the Google Play team notes. "To use these features, you can click 'Switch back' in the header at any time to return to the old version."

The Google Play storefront now boasts more than 675,000 Android apps in all, with downloads topping the 25 billion milestone late last month. Developer interest in Android lags behind enthusiasm for Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) iOS, however: A recent Appcelerator/IDC survey reveals that 76 percent of developers are very interested in building Android smartphone apps and slightly less than 66 percent indicate strong interest in Android tablet apps. Eighty-five percent of respondents are very interested in building apps for the iPhone, and 83 percent express comparable enthusiasm for creating iPad apps.

For more:
- read this Android Developers Blog entry

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