Google Officially Introduces Android 3.0 and Updates Android Market with In-App Billing

Submitted by lalit on February 18, 2011 - 1:48pm.

At yesterday’s Android event, Google made Android 3.0 of public and introduced some new features for Android Market. As we all know by now, Android 3.0 OS codenamed Honeycomb is focused on tablets and will bring feature like better scaling of Apps, higher resolution screen support and applications aimed specifically at tablet computing. Google demoed the new OS and some of its features at the event and you can check it out in the video below.

Even though, Android 3.0 is a big deal Google’s main focus for the event was on Android Market. Google introduced Android Market on the web, currency support for 32 countries and In-app billing.

Android market on the web: Google extended Android Market client from mobile devices to every desktop. Anyone can now easily find and share applications from their favorite browser. Once users select an application they want, it will automatically be downloaded to their Android-powered devices over-the-air. You can access Android Market on the web here.

Buyer’s Currency: Android Market lets developers sell applications to users in 32 buyer countries around the world. Now Google introduced Buyer’s Currency to give developer more control over how they price their products across those countries. This feature lets developer price their applications differently in each market and improves the purchase experience for buyers by showing prices in their home currencies.

In-app billing: This new service gives developers more ways to monetize their applications through new billing models including try-and-buy, virtual goods, upgrades, and more. Google will be e launching In-app Billing in stages. Beginning today, they will provide detailed documentation and a sample application to help developers get familiar with the service. Over the next few weeks Google will be rolling out updates to the Android Market client that will enable developers to test against the In-app Billing service. Before the end of this quarter, the service will be live for users.

Check out the Google Android 3.0 event video below for more information.