GOOGLE PLAY STORE

GOOGLE PLAY STORE:

 Google Play, formerly known as the Android Market, is the official app store for Android smartphones and tablets. Google makes software applications, music, movies and books available for purchase and download through the store.
 The Google Play store, which comes pre-installed on Android devices, allows users to purchase, download and install applications from Google and third-party developers.  Google Play is the only way to download and install applications on Android devices without changing the device's application setting to "allow the installation of non-market applications."

Google Play was launched on March 6, 2012 with the merger of Android Market, Google Music and Google e Bookstore, marking a shift in Google's digital distribution strategy. The services operating under the Google Play banner are: Google Play Music, Google Play Books, Google Play Newsstand, Google Play Movies & TV, and Google Play Games. The Google Play store has reached over 1.3 million apps published and over 50 billion downloads.

Applications

Google Play makes free-of-charge applications available worldwide (except countries under United States embargoes),  while paid applications are available in 135 countries.Applications can be installed from the device using the Google Play Store app or through the Google Play website on a PC. According to AppBrain Stats, there are over 1,400,000 applications available as of November 2014 of which over 1,200,000 are free and over 200,000 are paid. Google seems to remove low-quality apps from the store roughly once a quarter, when the number of available apps go down.

Music

Google Play offers an online music store with over 22 million songs, cloud storage of up to 20,000 songs at no cost, and a subscription music streaming service called All Access. Google Play Music is currently available in 58 countries.

Books

Google Play is the world's largest ebookstore with over 4 million titles. Google adopts Adobe Content Server 4 as the digital rights management (DRM) solution to protect copyrighted ebooks. Books can be transferred to and read on a number of e-readers and other devices and applications that support the Adobe eBook DRM.

Movies and TV shows

According to Google, there are thousands of movies and television shows available on Google Play Movies & TV, some in HD, including comedy, drama, animation, action and documentary. Movies can be rented or purchased and watched on the Google Play website or via an application on an Android device.  Alternatively, users can download movies and TV shows for offline viewing and view them later using the Google Play Movie app.

Movies are available in 70 countries.^] TV shows are available only in Australia, Canada, Japan, the US and the UK. The app reached over 500 million downloads in October 2014.

News and magazines

Google Play serves subscriptions to free and paid news publications, and magazines for reading on Play Newsstand. At the time of the launch of Play Newsstand, about 1,900 free and paid news publications were available.

Google Play-branded applications

Play Newsstand

On November 20, 2013, Google launched Google Play Newsstand which combined the features of Google Play Magazines and Google Currents into a single product, which serves subscriptions to magazines, web feeds and server-generated topical feeds. All topical news feeds are free and can be subscribed only from within the app. Priced news sources and magazines can be subscribed from the Google Play Store app on Android or the Google Play website on any device, while free news sources can be subscribed from both within the app or from Google Play. Reviews and ratings can be submitted for all Newsstand content distributed through Google Play.

Play Games

Google Play Games is a service designed for Android which features real-time multiplayer gaming capabilities, cloud saves, social and public leaderboards, and achievements. It helps users to discover new games by viewing what friends from Google+ are playing. It lists both games and friends on its home screen and lets users see highlights from both categories. This service is similar to Apple's Game Center.