Google wants to make 2022 the year of Android tablets, and after launching a tablet-focused Android 12L update, staffing an Android tablet department and shipping one or two tablet apps, the company is giving the Play Store now some love for tablets. The goal is to make it easier for tablet users to find real tablet apps rather than stretched phone apps.
First up are “Ranking and Profitability Changes” for the Play Store. Google says, “Over the coming months, we’ll be updating our features and ranking logic in Play on large screen devices to prioritize high-quality apps and games.” The rankings will “affect how apps appear in search results and home page recommendations, with the goal of helping users find the apps best optimized for their device.”
To get better rankings, an app has to be of ‘high quality’. The qualifications for this designation are detailed on a “big screen app quality” page, which contains common sense recommendations for creating better tablet apps. It starts with the “Basic Compatibility” layer, which includes things like “support landscape mode” (you’d be shocked how many Android apps screw this up) and “don’t pigeonhole your app”. The “Better” tier includes large screen layouts, multi-window support, and mouse and keyboard support. The “best” tier includes a fully responsive design for tablets, foldable devices, and desktop mode, along with stylus support and right-click context menus for a mouse.
Google doesn’t say how it will determine whether an app meets these criteria. The typical Google process would involve some sort of automated app scanning, although it’s not clear how good that type of system would be at determining “quality.”
Additionally, if apps don’t meet at least the “basic” requirements on a tablet, they’ll be flagged as “low quality” and the Play Store will display some sort of warning when a tablet user starts installing it. Google says to “stay tuned for further updates later this year” for more details.
Google Play also splits ratings by device type and shows the most relevant rating type by default. So tablet users see reviews for the tablet app, while phone users see reviews from phone users.
All in all, that’s a lot of solid improvements for tablet app discovery on Google Play. Now we just need developers, especially Google, to to make tablet apps.
Listing image by Google
