Although the app marketplace is booming in lockstep with consumers’ growing appetite for any and all mobile applications, Google is admitting disappointment over app sales in its Android marketplace.
Google’s Android platform manager Eric Chu is pleased that the number of Android smartphone users is on the rise, but purchases of paid apps in the Android Market continue to disappoint.
Chu made what have since become controversial remarks during a question-and-answer session with app developers at the Inside Social Apps conference in San Francisco yesterday.
Perhaps even more troublesome, however, is that Chu’s “roadmap for Android in 2011 lacked many specifics.” That’s according to Oliver Chiang, reporting on the conference for Forbes. The report notes that Chu used the phrase “stay tuned” enough to make a drinking game out of it.
Among the few revelations to surface during the presentation was that Android will finally debut an in-app payments system this quarter, closely emulating Apple’s winning formula in this enterprise.
Still, despite the apparent frustration and disappointment of some at Google over the perceived sluggish sales of apps in the Android marketplace, Android remains “a strategic investment for Google,” Chu reiterated. “I don’t expect to see any changes to that.”
