“Man, do we really still need to support Android 1.0?”
Up until recently, that was a pretty hard question for Android Devs to answer. Unless they built in a bit of system profiling code and had it send that info over to their server, Android devs really just didn’t really have any idea who was running their apps. Supporting a platform is a bit harder when you think you need to test on 15+ different versions of it.
Fortunately, Google’s gone out of their way to shed a light on the unknown. How? With good ol’ fashion stats!
Google is no stranger to statistics; their Analytics product has helped web developers around the globe count every last page view and mouse click. Today, their introducing something along the lines of Analytics for Android developers: Application Statistics.
The new App Stats page in the Developer Console will brief devs on:
What language your users use
Which countries are downloading your app the most
Which devices are using it the most? Big ol’ powerful superphones, or dinky antiques? It’s important to know.
What build of Android are your users running? Do you even need to be testing on Android 1.0, or 1.5 anymore — or is 99% of your user base on 2.0?+
It’s all incredibly important information. Imagine finding out the 80% of your users have their handset set to Japanese, and you’ve only got it running in English. What if all it took to double your sales was to translate your app?
