Posted by George Audi, Tom Grinsted and Larry Yang, Google Play

The subscription business model is one of the best ways to make more regular, reliable, and recurring revenue on Android and Google Play. In fact, both developers and users love subscription apps so much that we’ve seen a 10X growth in consumer spend over the past three years and double the number of active subscribers in the past year. Thousands of developers are offering subscriptions through Google Play and are already seeing success with our billing platform. That’s why we’ve been working hard to help you take advantage of this opportunity and give you greater insights into your business and Android users.

New features to help your subscriptions business
thrive

You've got a high-performing product with fantastic features and compelling
content, but your business can't succeed without acquiring new users. In
addition to free trials, intro pricing, flexible billing periods, and more, we
recently launched the ability to pay for subscriptions with Google Play
balance. Although people have already been using gift cards to pay for
Play content in over 20 countries, the use of gift cards to pay for
subscriptions in regions where cash is a popular form of payment, such as Latin
America, has resulted in as high as a 15% increase in subscription spend.

But it's not just about acquiring new customers, it's about retaining the ones
you have. That's why we are introducing account hold, where we
work with you to block access to your content or service if a user's form of
payment fails. This directly links a payment failure to the user losing access
to your content and/or premium features, which is enough to get them to go and
choose a new form of payment. When Keepsafe–the developer of href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kii.safe&hl=en">Keepsafe
Photo Vault, a photo locker for private pictures and videos with over 50M
downloads–integrated account hold, their renewal rate on Android increased by
25%. We have over a dozen developers in early access today, and we will be
announcing public availability at the end of June.

We know data is vital to running your business, so we're excited to announce a
new subscriptions dashboard in the Play Console, and a new
report on Android app subscribers.

The dashboard brings together subscription data like new subscribers, cancellations, and total subscribers. It also displays daily and 30-day rolling revenue data, and highlights your top-performing products. This will give visibility into your subscription products and users and will help guide your business decisions.

Insights to help you grow your subscriptions
business

In addition to products and features, understanding people's needs is core to
building a successful subscription business. We talked to 2,000 Android app
subscribers in the US and UK and asked them how and why they use the apps they
do. The results shared in 'href="http://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/subscription_apps_on_google_play.pdf">Subscription
apps on Google Play: User insights to help developers win' report
highlight some of the opportunities for you to grow your subscriptions user
base, set pricing strategies and learn to keep your users engaged, including:

• Use free trials to acquire users. 78% of users start with a
  free version of an app, and many cite a discount or end of a free trial as a
  reason to pay.
  
• Keep your content appealing and updated to get and keep users
  paying. It's the most important driver in converting users from free to
  paid users, as well as keeping users engaged and retained.

• There is a huge opportunity to make money from
  subscriptions. While pricing elasticity varies by category, few users
  cite price as a reason to churn from a paid subscription and 64% either budget
  on a per app basis or not at all (as opposed to budgeting across all app
  subscriptions).

To find out more about your growing your subscription business with Google Play,
watch
our I/O session, download
the research report (PDF), and get started with subscriptions
with Google Play In-app Billing.






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By Jenny Gove, Senior Staff UX Researcher, Google Play



We know you work hard to acquire users and grow your customer base, which can be
challenging in a crowded market. That's why we've heard from many of you that
you find tools like store
listing experiments and universal
app campaigns are valuable. It's equally important to keep customers engaged
from the beginning. Great design and delightful user experiences are fundamental
to doing just that.




We partnered with AnswerLab to conduct comprehensive user experience research
across a variety of verticals; including e-commerce, insurance, travel, food
ordering, ticket sales and services, and financial management. The resulting
insights may help you increase engagement and conversion by providing guidance
on useful and usable functionality.




The best app experiences seamlessly guide users through their tasks with
efficient navigation, search, forms, registration and purchasing. They provide
great e-commerce facilities and integrate effective ordering and payment
systems. Ultimately, an engaging app begins with attention to usability in all
of these areas. Learn tips on:

• Navigation & Exploration
  


• In-App Search
  


• Commerce & Conversions
  


• Registration
  


• Form Entry
  


• Usability and Comprehension

You can read the full article, design
your app to drive conversions, on the Android Developers website, complete
with links to developer resources. Also get
the Playbook for Developers app to stay up-to-date with features and best
practices that will help you grow a successful business on Google Play.

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Posted by Josh Solt (Partner Developer Manager, Kids Apps at Google Play) and Noemie Dupuy (Founder & Co-CEO at Budge Studios)



Developers spend a considerable amount of resources driving users to download
their apps, but what happens next is often the most critical part of the user
journey. User onboarding is especially nuanced in the kids
space since developers must consider two audiences: parents and children. When
done correctly, a compelling onboarding experience will meet the needs of both
parents and kids while also accounting for unique considerations, such as a
child's attention span.




Budge Studios has successfully grown their
catalog of children's titles by making onboarding a focal point of their
business. Their target demographic is three to eight-year olds, and their
portfolio of games include top titles featuring Strawberry Shortcake, Hello
Kitty, Crayola, Caillou and The Smurfs.

"First impressions matter, as do users' first experience with your app. In fact,
70%¹ of users who delete an app will do so within a day of having downloaded it,
leaving little time for second chances. As an expert in kids' content, Budge
tapped into our knowledge of kids to improve and optimize the onboarding
experience, leading to increased initial game-loop completion and retention." -
Noemie, Founder & Co-CEO at Budge Studios

Three key ways Budge Studios designs better onboarding
experiences:

1. Make sure your game is tailor-made for kids




When Budge released their app Crayola
Colorful Creatures, they looked at data to identify opportunities to create
a smoother onboarding flow for kids. At launch, only 25% of first-time users
were completing the initial game loop. Budge analyzed data against gameplay and
realized the last activity was causing a drastic drop-off. It required kids to
use the device's microphone, and that proved too challenging for very young
kids. Budge was able to adjust the initial game loop so that all the activities
were accessible to the youngest players. These adjustments almost tripled the
initial loop completion, resulting in 74% of first-time users progressing to see
additional activities.




2. Earn parents trust by providing real value upfront





Budge has a large of portfolio of apps. Earning parents' trust by providing
valuable and engaging experiences for kids is important for retaining users in
their ecosystem and achieving long term success.




With every new app, Budge identifies what content is playable for free, and what
content must be purchased. Early on, Budge greatly limited the amount of free
content they offered, but over time has realized providing high quality free
content enhances the first-time user experience. Parents are more willing to
spend on an app if their child has shown a real interest in a title.




Working with top kids' brands means that Budge can tap into brand loyalty of
popular kids characters to provide value. To launch Strawberry
Shortcake Dreams, Budge decided to offer Strawberry Shortcake, the most
popular character in the series, as a free character. Dress Up Dreams is among
the highest converting apps in the Budge portfolio, indicating that giving away
the most popular character for free helped conversions rather than hurting it.




3. Test with real users




Budge knows there is no substitute for direct feedback from its end-users, so
Budge involves kids every step of the way. Budge Playgroup is a playtesting
program that invites families to try out apps at the alpha, beta and
first-playable development stages.




The benefits from early testing can be as basic as understanding how the size
and coordination of kids' hands affect their ability to complete certain actions
or even hold the device, and as specific as pinpointing a less-than-effective
button.




In the testing stages of Strawberry Shortcake Holiday Hair, Budge caught an
issue with the main menu of the app, which would not have been evident without
observing kids using the app.

Prior to Playtesting:

After Playtesting:

In the original design, users were prompted to start gameplay by audio cues.
During testing, it was clear that the voiceover was not sufficient in guiding
kids to initiate play, and that additional visual clues would significantly
improve the experience. A simple design change resulted in a greatly enhanced
user experience.




The onboarding experience is just one component of an app, but just like first
impressions, it has a disproportionate impact on your users' perception of your
app. As Budge has experienced, involving users in testing your app, using data
to flag issues and providing real value to your users upfront, creates a
smoother, more accessible onboarding experience and leads to better results.




For more best practices on developing family apps and games, please check out The
Family Playbook for
developers.
And visit the Android Developers website to stay up-to-date with features and
best practices that will help you grow a
successful business on Google Play.




1.http://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/mobile-app-retention-5-key-strategies-to-keep-your-customers/

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Posted by Sarah Thomson, BD Partnerships Lead, Indies, Google Play
Games




Mobile gaming is a fun place to be right now. It's a landscape seeing tremendous
success year after year with great potential for additional growth and
innovation. It's also a space where developers can express themselves with
creative game styles, mechanics, design and more. This is what the indie
community does best.




Here are 5 tips for indies by indies, shared by our gaming partners at 505
Games, About
Fun, Disruptor
Beam, Klei
Entertainment, and Schell
Games.

1. Embrace being indie

Indies are inherently smaller operations and should embrace their agility and
ability to take risks. Petr Vodak, CEO at About
Fun, recommends getting your product out there so you can
start taking feedback and apply your learnings to future projects. Don't be
afraid to fail! Remaining flexible and building in modularity so you can evolve
with the business needs is a strategy embraced by Pete Arden, CMO at Disruptor
Beam. For instance, with their game Star Trek Timelines, the initial user
experience was tailored to avid Star Trek fans. Over time, as user acquisition
costs increased, they've changed the new player experience to appeal to their
evolving user base of gamers looking for a fun entertainment experience and less
the specific Star Trek IP.

2. Find a way to stand out

To help stand out in the ultra competitive mobile space, Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell
Games, recommends doing something clever or very different. This strategy
has led them to explore the growth areas of new platforms such as AR & VR. While
new platforms present a field for opportunity and creativity, they're best to be
approached with the long term in mind allowing you to sustain the business until
critical mass is reached.

3. Build a community

There are many ways to build communities. If you have an existing fan base on
other platforms, cross-promote to drive awareness of your mobile offerings. You
can also look at porting titles over, but be aware of the differences in mobile
gaming habits and ensure you adapt your game accordingly.

4. Engage after install

Both 505
Games and Klei
Entertainment recommend running your premium titles as a service. Through
monitoring user reviews you can gain invaluable feedback and trends helping you
better understand user pain points and desires. In addition, by releasing
regular content updates and in-game events you create reason for users to get
back in the game. This not only drives reengagement, but 505 Games also sees
strong spikes in new installs aligned with major game updates.

5. Monetize in different ways

Similar strategy to above, dropping regular content refreshes and game updates
while offering a variety of monetization options gives users more ways to engage
with your game. Keeping your games fresh gives users reason to come back and
builds loyalty so you can cross-promote to your users with future game launches.




If you're looking for a fun new game to play, check out the great selection on
Indie
Corner on Google Play. And if you're working on a new indie game of your
own, nominate your title for
inclusion.




Watch
more sessions from Google Developer Day at GDC17 on the Android Developers
YouTube channel to learn tips for success. Visit the Android Developers website
to stay up-to-date with features and best practices that will help you grow a
successful business on Google Play.

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Posted by Dave Geffon, Partnerships Manager, Google Play Games




The most successful games usually have the strongest communities. They are a
powerful force in driving additional engagement and increasing awareness for
your titles. At GDC 2017, we spoke with a few game developers about best
practices for successfully building their own communities. Watch the panel
session below to hear advice from Seriously,
Social
Point, and Super
Evil MegaCorp.

1. Be authentic

Community is a mindset; be honest, transparent & patient with
your communications. Loyal users are extremely valuable, thus the folks at Super
Evil Megacorp say that you should act like you have to earn every player.



2. Start small

Build a plan and start today. Launch your social media
channels, look into influencers, and create a strategy. Whether it's sharing one
piece of fan art a week across your network, or running a closed beta to gather
feedback from your most valued users, take action and learn what works best for
you and your users.

3. Play match-maker

When finding influencers to support your game, ensure
they're a genuine match. Make sure the influencer's audience is a good fit with
your game and existing community.

4. Seek feedback 

Communities are passionate. Use feedback to understand what
kind of game and features your users want. Be flexible and iterative so you can
react and evolve your game with the needs and desires of your community.
However, don't be afraid to stay true to what you stand for as sometimes you'll
need to agree to disagree with some players.

5. Build for the long-term

The lifespan of games is continuing to grow. Plan
your business strategy, update cycles and community efforts to roll out over
time and expand with your growing experiences and user-base.

Watch
more sessions from Google Developer Day at GDC17 on the Android Developers
YT channel to learn tips for success. Also, visit the Android Developers website
to stay up-to-date with features and best practices that will help you grow a
successful business on Google Play.

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Posted by Adam Gutterman, Go-To-Market Strategic Lead, Google Play
Games




Last month at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), we held a developer panel
focused on sharing best practices for building successful app and game
businesses. Check out 5 tips for developers, both large and small, as shared by
our gaming partners at Electronic
Arts (EA), Hutch
Games, Nix
Hydra, Space Ape
Games and Omnidrone.

1. Test, test, test

The best time to test, is before you launch; so test boldly and test a lot! Nix
Hydra recommends testing creative, including art style and messaging, as well as
gameplay mechanics, onboarding flows and anything else you're not sure about.
Gathering feedback from real users in advance of launching can highlight what's
working and what can be improved to ensure your game's in the best shape
possible at launch.

2. Store listing experiments

Run experiments on all of your store listing page assets. Taking bold risks
instead of making assumptions allows you to see the impact of different
variables with your actual user base on Google Play. Test in different regions
to ensure your store listing page is optimized for each major market, as they
often perform differently.



3. Early Access program



Space Ape Games recently used Early Access to test different onboarding
experiences and gameplay control methods in their game. Finding the right
combination led them to double-digit growth in D1 retention. Gathering these
results in advance of launch helped the team fine tune and polish the game,
minimizing risk before releasing to the masses.

"Early Access is cool because you can ask the big questions and get real
answers from real players," Joe Raeburn, Founding Product Guy at Space Ape
Games.

Watch the Android Developer Story below to hear how Omnidrone benefits from
Early Access using strong user feedback to improve retention, engagement and
monetization in their game.

Mobile game developer Omnidrone benefits from Early Access.

4. Pre-registration



Electronic Arts has run more than 5 pre-registration campaigns on Google Play.
Pre-registration allows them to start marketing and build awareness for titles
with a clear call-to-action before launch. This gives them a running start on
launch day having built a group of users to activate upon the game's release
resulting in a jump in D1 installs.



5. Seek feedback



All partners strongly recommended seeking feedback early and often. Feedback
tells both sides of the story, by pointing out what's broken as well as what
you're doing right. Find the right time and channels to request feedback,
whether they be in-game, social, email, or even through reading and responding
to reviews
within the Google Play store.




If you're a startup who has an upcoming launch on Google Play or has launched an
app or game recently and you're interested in opportunities like Early Access
and pre-registration, get
in touch with us so we can work with you.




Watch
sessions from Google Developer Day at GDC17 on the Android Developers YT
channel to learn tips for success. Also, visit the Android Developers website to
stay up-to-date with features and best practices that will help you grow a
successful business on Google Play.

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Posted by Dan Albert, Android NDK Tech Lead

Android NDK r14

The latest version of the Android Native Development Kit (NDK), Android NDK r14,
is now available for download. It
is also available in the SDK manager via Android Studio.



So what's new in r14? The full changelog can be seen here, but the
highlights include the following:

• Updated all the platform headers to unified headers (covered in detail
  below)
  


• LTO with Clang now works on Darwin and Linux
  


• libc++ has been updated. You can now use thread_local for statics with
  non-trivial destructors (Clang only)
  


• RenderScript is back!

Unified Headers

We've completely redone how we ship platform header files in the NDK. Rather
than having one set of headers for every target API level, there's now a single
set of headers. The availability of APIs for each Android platform is guarded in
these headers by #if __ANDROID_API__ >= __ANDROID_API_FOO__ preprocessor
directives.




The prior approach relied on periodically-captured snapshots of the platform
headers. This meant that any time we fixed a header-only bug, the fix was only
available in the latest version aside from the occasional backport. Now bugfixes
are available regardless of your NDK API level.




Aside from bugfixes, this also means you'll have access to modern Linux UAPI
headers at every target version. This will mostly be important for people
porting existing Linux code (especially low-level things). Something important
to keep in mind: just because you have the headers doesn't mean you're running
on a device with a kernel new enough to support every syscall. As always with
syscalls, ENOSYS is a possibility.




Beyond the Linux headers, you'll also have modern headers for OpenGL, OpenSLES,
etc. This should make it easier to conditionally use new APIs when you have an
older target API level. The GLES3 headers are now accessible on Ice Cream
Sandwich even though that library wasn't available until KitKat. You will still
need to use all the API calls via dlopen/dlsym, but you'll at least have
access to all the constants and #defines that you would need for invoking
those functions.


Note that we'll be removing the old headers from the NDK with r16, so the sooner
you file bugs, the smoother the transition will go.

Caveats

The API #ifdef guards do not exist in third-party headers like those found in
OpenGL. In those cases you'll receive a link time error (undefined reference)
rather than a compile time error if you use an API that is not available in your
targeted API level.




Standalone toolchains using GCC are not supported out of the box (nor will they
be). To use GCC, pass -D__ANDROID_API__=$API when compiling.

Enabling Unified Headers in Your Build

To ease the transition from the legacy headers to the unified headers, we
haven't enabled the new headers by default, though we'll be doing this in r15.
How you opt-in to unified headers will depend on your build system.

ndk-build

In your Application.mk:

    APP_UNIFIED_HEADERS := true

You can also set this property from the command-line like this:

    $ ndk-build APP_UNIFIED_HEADERS=true

If you're using ndk-build via Gradle with externalNativeBuild, specify the
following configuration settings in build.gradle:

    android {
      ...
      defaultConfig {
        ...
        externalNativeBuild {
          ndkBuild {
            ...
            arguments "APP_UNIFIED_HEADERS=true"
          }
        }
      }
    }

CMake

When configuring your build, set ANDROID_UNIFIED_HEADERS=ON. This will usually
take the form of invoking CMake with cmake -DANDROID_UNIFIED_HEADERS=ON
$OTHER_ARGS.




If you're using CMake via Gradle with externalNativeBuild, you can use:

    android {
      ...
      defaultConfig {
        ...
        externalNativeBuild {
          cmake {
            ...
            arguments "-DANDROID_UNIFIED_HEADERS=ON"
          }
        }
      }
    }

Standalone Toolchains

When creating your standalone toolchain, pass --unified-headers. Note that
this option is not currently available in the legacy script, make-standalone-toolchain.sh, but only in make_standalone_toolchain.py.

Experimental Gradle Plugin

Coming soon! Follow along here.

Custom Build System?

We've got you covered. Instructions on adding support for unified headers to
your build system can be found here.



For additional information about unified headers, see our docs and the tracking bug. If you're looking ahead to future releases, the most up-to-date version of the
documentation is in the master branch.

Posted by Noah Falstein, Chief Game Designer at Google

The Game Developers Conference (GDC) kicks off on Monday, February 27th with our
annual Google
Developer Day. Join us as we demonstrate how new devices, platforms, and
tools are helping developers build successful businesses and push the limits of
mobile gaming on Android.

Expect exciting announcements, best practices, and tips covering a variety of
topics including Google Play, Daydream VR, Firebase, Cloud Platform, machine
learning, monetization, and more. In the afternoon, we'll host panels to hear
from developers first-hand about their experiences launching mobile games,
building thriving communities, and navigating the successes and challenges of
being an indie developer.

Visit our site for more info and the Google
Developer Day schedule. These events are part of the official Game
Developer's Conference, so you will need a pass to attend. For those who can't
make it in person, watch the live stream on YouTube
starting at 10am PST on Monday, February 27th.

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Posted by David Yin, Business Development Manager, Indonesia, Google Play.




It is a great time to be a mobile game developer on Android with the opportunity
reaching more than a billion global users on Google Play. At the same time,
developers in fast growing mobile markets like Indonesia have an additional
opportunity in the form of a huge local audience that is hungry for local
content. We have already seen thousands of Indonesian developers launch high
quality, locally relevant games for this new audience, such as "Tahu
Bulat" & "Tebak
Gambar".




In our continuous quest to discover, nurture growth, and showcase the best games
from Indonesia, we are really happy to announce Indonesia Games
Contest. This contest celebrates the passion and great potential of local
game developers, and provides an opportunity to raise awareness of your game
with global and local industry experts, together with gamers, from across
Indonesia. It's also a chance to showcase your creativity and win cool
prizes.

Entering the contest

The contest is only open to developers based in Indonesia who have published a
new game on Google Play after 1 January 2016. Make sure to visit our contest
website for the full list of eligibility
criteria and terms. A quick summary of the process is below:

1. If you are eligible, submit your game by 19 March 2017.
   


2. Entries will be reviewed by Google Play team and industry experts, and up to
   15 finalists will be announced in early April 2017.
   


3. The finalists will get to showcase their games at the final event in Jakarta
   on 26 April 2017.
   


4. Winner and runners up will be announced at final event.

To get started

Visit our contest
website to find out more about the contest and submit your game.

Terima Kasih!

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Posted by Vineet Tanwar, Business Development Manager, Google Play

Indie game developers bring high quality, artistic, and innovative content to
Google Play and raise the bar for all developers in the process. In fact, they
also make up a large portion of our 'Editor's Choice' recommended titles.

Southeast Asia, in particular, has a vibrant indie game developer ecosystem, and
we've been working closely with them to provide tools that help them build
successful businesses on Google Play. Today, we're sharing stories from three
Indie developers based in Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia, who joined us at
our 'Indie Game Developers Day' workshops in May 2016 and all of whom have
experienced significant growth since.




Inzen Studio from Singapore learned how to use store
listing experiments and has improved the conversion rate of their newly
launched game Dark
Dot by 25%. Indonesia based studio, Niji Games, creator of Cute
Munchies, implemented 'Saved Games' and 'Events and Quests' from Google Play
games services to significantly improve user retention, and also earned an
'Editor's Choice' badge in the process. Ho Chi Minh City based developer,
VGames, optimized monetization and introduced new paid products for their game
Gungun
online, and grew revenue by over 100%.

Indie game developers who are interested in meeting members of Google Play and
who would like to work closer with us are invited to join our next round of SEA
workshops in March 2017. To apply for these events, just fill in this
form and we will reach out to you.

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