Play Newsstand has a surprisingly large user base due to the fact that it is pre-installed on most Android devices. Earlier this month, the app was updated with some visual tweaks to the main feed and article layout. Today, users in eight Middle Eastern countries will be able to buy paid content from the app.
At this point it’s just about once a month that an app on the Play Store manages pass 1 billion installs. This month, the app to reach this milestone was Google Play Newsstand.
Not many apps have reached this number, and third-party apps from Facebook are the only outside of Google to do it. As you might expect, other popular Google-made apps like Google Maps and Gmail, alongside Hangouts, Play Music, and others, managed to pass the 1 billion mark a while ago.
Passing 1 billion installs isn’t very exciting for Play Newsstand considering the app comes pre-installed on most Android phones, but it’s worth noting that not all of Google’s stock apps have come anywhere close to this milestone. Google Docs, for example, which comes shipped on all Nexus devices and others, is only in the 50-100 million range.
Google Play Newsstand, which serves as the hub of all kinds of news and magazines for your Android device, is apparently coming to four new countries as of today. According to a post made by the Google Play team on Google+, those countries include Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, and South Korea.
Prepare the comfy chair. Google Play Newsstand is now in Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, and South Korea.
This addition, while expanding Play offerings to these countries, leaves a lot to be desired. Many of Google’s other Play services, like Play Music and Play Movies & TV, are still missing in a few of these countries. You can get Google Play Newsstand on the Play Store for free.
Following the renaming of its Google Currents news reader app to “Google Play Newsstand” on Android back in February, Google has now given a similar treatment to the iOS app. The app, like the Android version earlier this year, also receives a makeover in the process with a streamlined design and new features:
What’s new
• New navigation helping you easily access the articles and editions you love including:
– Read Now – Easily access articles you subscribe to and discover new articles and editions all in one place
– Topics – Subscribe and get news from topics you are most interested in
– My Library – All of your subscriptions will be found here
• A brand new design giving you a streamlined news reading experience
The Google Play Newsstand app is available for free for iPhone and iPad on the App Store now.
Back in November, Google announced that Currents news service would slowly be transitioned into a new Google Play Newsstand app, and today, the company has finally taken the final step. Google today released an update for the Currents app that makes it nothing more than a pathway to Play Newsstand (via Android Police).
When users launch the Currents app after updating, they will be presented with a screen telling them to download Google Play Newsstand. Newsstand will be able to automatically import all Currents subscription, making the transition as easy as possible for users. Once users agree to make the switch to Newsstand, the app icon for Currents will disappear, making it impossible to ever return.
iOS users are still waiting for Google’s Newsstand app, but there’s something with an eerily similar name preinstalled on all iOS devices already…
It looks like Google might be repairing a new section in the Google Play store specifically for news content in subscription and issue form. While Google already has a dedicated Magazine section on the Play store, AndroidPolice first noticed clues in code for the web version of Google Play that hint Google could be preparing to launch a new service dubbed “Google Play News.”
While we don’t get much information about the service, we do learn Google Play News could offer “issues” and “subscriptions”. This makes us think the company could be preparing a subscription news service that rivals Apple’s Newsstand on iOS. Apple currently offers both issues of newspapers and magazines in subscription form through its Newsstand app.
It’s not clear how exactly the Play News section would differ from the existing Magazine section, but AndroidPolice noted that the Google Play code points to the section having its own heading color. This suggests it will indeed be a dedicated category on the store.
As I’m sure you know, the Play Store is color themed – Books are blue, Music is orange, etc. So the most important question a discovery like this raises is “What color will the News section be?” It turns out we can actually answer this one thanks to the Play Store CSS (mirror). It’s yellow. The News section will be yellow.
It’s a possibility Google will eventually merge this new newspaper feature with magazines like how Apple’s Newsstand app works, but we’ll have to wait to find out for sure what Google officially has planned for the service.