Google Play enhanced while Android hits 900 million activations
At Google's I/O annual developer conference, Google announced it has enhanced Google Play to increase monitisation opportunities for the developer community.
Just one year after the launch of Google Play there have been 48 billion app downloads, including over 2.5 billion last month, according to Google Play lead product manager, Greg Hartrell.
Overall, Android has experienced 900 million activations as of this year, up from 100 million activations in 2011, and 400 million in 2012.
To aid continued growth, Google has now launched a new range of tools in Google Play, including services for game developers.
In his blog, Hartrell said: 'We're launching Google Play game services, a core part of building a gaming platform for the next generation of games. These services help you make your games more social, with achievements, leaderboards, and multiplayer, as well as more powerful, storing game saves and settings in the cloud.
'They are available on Android, and many on iOS or any other connected device,' added Hartrell. 'By building on Google's strengths in mobile and cloud services, you can focus on what you're good at as game developers: creating great gaming experiences for your users.'
He noted that Google Play game services are available now through an SDK for Android, and a native iOS SDK for iPhone and iPad games. Web and other platform developers can find corresponding REST APIs, with libraries for JavaScript, Java, Python, Go, Dart, PHP, and more.
