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FLORINA MUNTENESCU: Hello, and welcome to I/O Live.
I'm Florina Muntenescu, your host.
And I'm here with Matt Henderson from Google Play.
Hello, Matt.
MATT HENDERSON: Hi.
Super excited to be here.
FLORINA MUNTENESCU: So tell me what's
new in Google Play for developers?
MATT HENDERSON: There's tons of new stuff launching this year,
broadly speaking, in three areas.
So we've got a whole new format, a new app
model that's launching today.
We've also got a bunch of new features
that help developers to do testing and prevent bugs
in their apps.
And we also have some features launching today,
which help developers to manage their business
and to grow their business on Play.
FLORINA MUNTENESCU: OK.
This new app model sounds interesting.
Can I hear more about it?
MATT HENDERSON: Yeah.
So there's really two different things
that we're launching within the app model.
So one is the Android app bundle.
That's a new format, a publishing format,
that a developer can use that enables him to reduce
the size of their app.
The Android app bundle makes use of a Play technology--
Play dynamic delivery.
And together, it serves the optimal APK
for a user's given device.
And so it optimizes for the user-specific CPU architecture
of their device.
It optimizes for their screen densities.
It optimizes for the user's languages
that they speak as well.
And so by only sending the parts of the bundle that the user
actually needs, it means that the APK that goes to the device
is a lot smaller.
And that, in turn, enables much better
install conversion rates, enables lower uninstall rates.
Because when the app sizes are too big, users react badly.
And so that's something we're launching today that I think
is going to be a big win for developers.
FLORINA MUNTENESCU: And you also mentioned
something about testing.
Tell me more.
MATT HENDERSON: As developers, you'll
have noticed if-- during the release process,
it's a time of risk.
Because you can have bugs going out with a new release.
And we have new testing track features
that help to reduce that risk.
And so you can now use Play Publishing
for testing and sending out the APK
to up to 100 internal dog food testers.
So that's the internal testing track.
We also now have multiple testing tracks for close betas.
And then, also to help you reduce the bugs in your apps
and improve that quality, there's
some new features in Android Vitals
and new features in the pre-launch report.
In Vitals, we have new metrics, like app startup time.
We've also launched a new overview page in Vitals
that draws your attention to anomalies.
If some of the Vitals metrics are particularly bad,
then it'll highlight those to you
so you know which ones to prioritize.
With the pre-launch report-- so that
is the automated crawler that tests apps prior to them
going into production.
And we've launched some new features today
that enable you to reach further into the corners of your app
that the crawler might not have otherwise reached.
Features like, a developer can record scripts
in Android Studio that help the crawler to go
into particular parts of the app.
Game developers, if you use Open GL,
you can create demo loops that help the pre-launch report
crawler to reach different parts of your app as well.
And so all these features will mean
that once your app hits production,
it's been much more scrutinized, eliminating more of these bugs.
We're launching a new app dashboard
in the console, which summarizes a range
of different statistics.
It's, I think, much easier at drawing the user into the most
important metrics.
You can also configure the page now
depending on which ones are priorities for you.
And we have some new business stats
that we're launching as well.
For subscription developers, if you have a subscription model,
there is now a more complex view to understand it at greater
detail of different subscription states-- subscriber states--
and how you benchmark retention for your app versus other apps
as well.
You can look at new metrics, like average revenue per user.
There's new data about the acquisition and user retention
funnel.
There you can also compare your stats
for your app against benchmark for peer apps
that are functionally similar.
So all of these things hopefully help
developers discover opportunities
that can enable them to grow and be successful in Play.
FLORINA MUNTENESCU: Perfect.
Lots of new things for developers, but also
for the business side.
Thank you, Matt.
This is Florina for I/O Live.
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