It looks MiKandi isn’t the only one to overhaul their app store. Over the next two weeks, Google Android will be rolling out a major update to to Android Market. Just like MiKandi users, folks with devices running Android 1.6 will see the changes. If your device runs Android 1.5 and you want MiKandi and the new Android Market, there may be a manual update or root available to you. (Cliq users, see this manual update from Motorola.)
According to to this blog post from Google Android, the focus of the redesign was to improve merchandising and discoverability, something that plagues larger app markets. The Market’s answer to this problem is a carousel of promoted apps on the home and category screens, more categories, and related apps.
In addition to the carousel, the Market will include two new popular categories- Widgets and Live Wallpaper. The Market will also be “adding more categories for popular applications and games in the weeks ahead.”
Opening an app page, you’ll see a new tab called “Related”. From here you can view related apps , making it easier to find apps of similar interest. We expect the developers may have mixed feelings about this. ;)
As mentioned above, we haven’t had a chance to see the new market first hand, but from the looks of it, it seems that Google Android has come to many of the same conclusions that we came to when we redesigned the MiKandi App Store three weeks back. Namely faster performance, intuitive navigation, and better search capabilities. We also sought to reduce the number of screen changes and deliver relevant apps as quickly as possible. Browsing the MiKandi App Store, you’ll notice that we have only three major screens- MiAccount, App Store, and MiTheater. Directly from App Store users can browse by changing their filters (Featured, Top Paid, Top Free, Latest, Highest Rated) and categories (All, Entertainment, Games, Social, Erotica, Mobile Sites, News) without changing screens or scrolling.
We haven’t received the update to any of our devices yet, but we’re excited to see what’s in store for the Android Market these up coming weeks.






