CHRIS YERGA: Thank you so much, Bill.
And thank you all for coming here to Playtime in Shanghai.
For those of you who have some difficulty understanding
my funny accent, this is probably
a good time to put your translation earphones in.
My name is Chris Yerga.
I'm the Vice President of Engineering at Google,
responsible for Google Play in Asia.
I've been working in the software industry
for about 25 years now.
But I can't imagine any time that
was more exciting than the one right now.
And the fact that we come out here and see so many
of you, with all of your energy, and passion, and enthusiasm
for apps and games, I think that shows why.
So we've got a lot of great content for you today.
I'm going to kick things off, catching you up a little bit
on the latest developments in Android.
And then we'll talk a little bit about how
you can build a global business on Google Play.
So Android, as you know, is Google's open source operating
system.
It was released several years ago
and has had incredible success.
This chart here shows the growth in active Android devices.
And we're just so pleased that we've gotten to a point
where we have far more than a billion active Android devices.
But the other staggering thing that sometimes I
have difficulty understanding is that 1.5 million new devices
are running Android and are being activated
each and every day.
So 1.5 million is a lot.
It's hard to get your head around.
And so we did a thought experiment, where we said,
what if we stacked all of those 1.5 million devices on top
of each other?
Would it go to the roof of this building?
Would it go beyond the roof of the building?
It turns out that when you stack 1.5 million
of these Android devices on top of each other,
it extends beyond the peak of Mount Everest,
indeed even above the cruising altitude of a jet
that many of us took to come here.
So that's an Everest worth of new devices
being activated every day.
And all of those devices represent an opportunity
for all of you, as a way to get your apps
and games into the hands of many, many customers.
Now, success like that doesn't happen just because of the work
that we at Google are doing.
Android is the result of a global ecosystem that
includes 60 OEMs building Android devices,
329 mobile carriers that are selling these devices
and service in over 190 countries.
And of course, the other really important part
of that ecosystem are the people that
are building great apps and games
for Google Play and Android, which is all of you.
The results of that are impressive as well.
So globally, 78% of the world's smartphones
run Android today and 62% of the world's tablets.
So that's an incredible number.
And all of these people are potential customers for you.
So that's why, today, you're going
to hear us talk about going global quite a bit.
That's because these numbers represent
the global opportunity for Android and Google Play.
86% of those devices run Android 4.0 and above,
giving you the chance to use the newest APIs to really
wow people with your content.
But as big as those numbers are, there
are still 5 billion people on this planet who
don't have a smartphone yet.
And so we're focused on getting Android
into the hands of as many of those people as possible.
And so we recently announced Android One,
which is our initiative to deliver
a powerful and beautiful Android experience at a very low price
point that's appropriate for many of the emerging
markets in Asia and around the world.
We're also focused on not just getting smartphones
into everybody's hands, but also having
Android run on as many different device types as is possible.
We recently this year announced our Android TV initiative,
which is about running Android on what is normally
the biggest and best display screen in your house, which
is your TV.
And particularly for those of you
who are building Android games, the TV
represents a really great opportunity for users
to enjoy those games, not just when they're on the go
but when they're in their living rooms as well.
And because it runs Android, it means
that you can adapt your game to run on the TV with very
minimal effort and investment.
And then from things very big to things very small-- of course,
Android Wear is another recently announced initiative
to get Android running on wearable devices and devices
like wrist watches that can not only
augment the experience on a smartphone
with real-time notifications and interaction,
but also integrate a variety of health-related sensors,
pedometer, all that sort of stuff.
And then finally, there's the Android Automotive product,
which is about getting Android directly into the entertainment
system of automobiles.
So across all of these different types of devices,
we're really focused on bringing Android
to people, wherever they are, and whatever they're doing.
Now, when you talk about having Android running on everything
from a television, to a tablet, to a smartphone, to a wearable,
it's really important also to have a user interface
that scales between those screens
efficiently and gives some consistency of experience.
This effort started 5,000 years ago,
with the invention of paper.
That actually happened here in China.
And material design is our contribution
to thinking about what smart paper might
look like, here in the present, in the 21st century.
We'll have some more details about material design coming up
in the next talk.
Obviously, on top of all that rides Google Play.
Google Play is installed on this Everest worth of devices that
are being activated every day.
And the result of that is we have Google Play.
That is your one-stop shop for not only apps and games,
but also movies, books, whatever entertainment content
our customers want.
And the results of that have been just as impressive
as Android's own success, with 50 billion
plus applications downloaded in total from the Google Play
Store and an additional 2 billion
of those being downloaded each and every month.
So now I just want to talk a little bit about--
of those 50 billion applications,
games is an important category.
Games are very popular with our users.
And one interesting thing to think about here
is that games are the sort of things that everybody
can appreciate and enjoy.
And in fact, our metrics show that three
out of every four Android users plays games on their device.
Now, that means that games are reaching
people who probably never really thought
of themselves as a gamer.
It's very broad.
And so with so many different people playing games
on Android, that represents a huge opportunity
for all of you.
And we're assisting in this with something
we call Google Play Game Services, which
enables features like achievements, high score
lists, multiplayer matchmaking, quests, leaderboards, and more.
And this is our opportunity to provide some common services
so that you don't need to make that investment yourself.
And the benefits are such that 100 million new users have
adopted Google Play Game Services in just six months,
making it the fastest growing mobile game
service of all time.
And for you, the developer, what that means
is when people are using Google Play Games enabled games,
they're more engaged.
So we did a case study with one of our partners.
And their own internal data showed
that users who use Google Play Game
Services to see what their friends were doing
and compete on high scores, et cetera,
were 300% more likely to come back after three days
and 400% more likely to come back after seven days.
So it's a way not just to help get your app discovered
through the social connections people have with their friends,
but also to deepen retention.
So we talked a lot about the numbers and the fact
that there's a global opportunity.
So one of the main reasons we're here today is to talk to you
and find out what we could do for you to help you take
advantage of this opportunity.
As we mentioned, you'll hear us use the word "go global"
quite a bit today.
There's a global opportunity here,
with the 2 billion apps that are being downloaded every month
across 190 countries.
And that opportunity has been utilized
by triple the number of developers who've
registered with Google Play, from the Asia Pacific
region in particular.
So it's not just about distributing your app globally.
We at Google take a holistic approach
through the entire life cycle.
So it starts with developing your application, as well
as distribution, and then monetization,
and closing the loop with metrics, and analytics,
and statistics, so that you can optimize
the performance of your app and the performance
of your business.
So today, I'm just going to spend some time talking
about three of these areas-- in particular, development,
international distribution, and monetization.
So as we mentioned before, in the development of your app
and game, we highly encourage you
to integrate Google Play Game Services to get
the benefits of discoverability and engagement
that we talked about.
And there's also additional Google services
that we encourage you to look at.
So AdMob has an SDK to help monetize your app or game
through in-app advertising.
And then, also, Google's cloud platform
is an important offering as well.
Google's cloud platform allows you to build your game or app
backend, using the same cloud infrastructure that Google uses
for our own services, so that if you have
a very fast, successful app, and your users grow and skyrocket,
that you can scale with it by letting Google
use its expertise to help you scale,
rather than having to do all that on your own.
And another important thing is to focus on app quality
so that you're giving your users the best possible experience,
which will then increase your app and game
rankings in the store, which then helps you in terms
of getting future installs.
We have a lot of services to help you get good feedback
from your customers.
We also offer alpha and beta testing,
so that you can test new changes or new versions
of your app with a select, small group of people first,
so that you can be sure that you've
addressed all the quality issues before you release it
to the world.
Getting ready for global reach-- obviously,
with 190 countries globally served by Google Play,
there's a lot of different users out there.
And many of them are coming online
from emerging markets, where Android One, we hope,
was going to assist.
But the other thing is that when you're localizing your app,
Google Play also offers, in our developer console,
the ability for you to upload your application
and then work directly with translation services
to get your strings and application
localized for a variety of different customers.
Now obviously, monetization is a topic that's
top-of-mind for many of us.
And we've worked tirelessly at Google Play
to increase the amount of ways that we
offer for your customers to pay for your apps and games.
We've launched Google Play gift cards in a number of markets.
And that has been very popular with customers.
In addition, we've been adding new forms of payment, Paypal
being the most recent example.
But I think the area where we've had some of the most
success with our customers is through direct carrier billing,
where we work with mobile phone carriers
to enable their customers to charge their app and game
purchases directly to their phone bill.
And we've been working with literally dozens
of different mobile carriers globally to enable this.
We also have-- you can monetize, obviously,
through a paid app download, in-app purchasing, which
is very popular.
Many of our top grossing apps utilize in-app purchasing
as their monetization strategy.
We've also added the ability for subscription billing,
so that you can get a recurring source of revenue
from your customers.
The results of that have been quite large.
We announced that in the period from June 2013 to June
of this year, we paid out $5 billion,
in US dollars equivalent, to our developer partners.
And that's a large amount of money.
But it's not just the amount of money.
But the other impressive thing about that is that the growth
rate represents 2.5x year-over-year growth.
So it's a huge market.
But it's also rapidly expanding.
And we welcome all of you to help
build apps and games to partake in the success yourself.
The way we think about this is you're
not just building an app, you're building a business.
And Google Play is there to partner with you
in all the ways that we'll be talking
about today, to help you take your app to a business.
As I mentioned, in conclusion, we
help you throughout the entire lifecycle,
from designing, developing, and distribution.
We give you analytics insights to help
you optimize your app and your business
and expand into new markets with Google's technology assistance.
And without further ado, we're going
to hear the first of our deep dives in this area.
I'd like to welcome Ellie Powers to the stage,
to talk about building your app for success on Google Play.