* Make the top listings more interesting by sorting them differently (eg. by a ratio of time, comments and ratings instead of the total number of downloads). There should be more change and not the same apps in the top positions for years.
* Combat spam publishers (those with hundreds of sound boards and similar apps, which pollute the new listings by pushing interesting apps way down, which happens rather frequently). One idea could be a timeout between publishing/updating apps, for example only one app per 12 or 24 hours. Could be adjusted depending on the rating of the apps.
* Make a market website where developers can link to their apps (a la AppStore)
* This app website should have an push-to-phone button. If clicked Google pushes the app's package name to the user's device, which opens a popup for installing it. That would _greatly_ simplify installing apps - QR codes simply don't provide enough usability.
* And as dpcan said, the ability to describe an app with more than 325 characters.
I get the feeling as if the Android market is just not a high priority project of Google.
They could very easily combat comment spam too. The DroidPhoneFiles comment is almost always the #1 comment on my free apps. I'd say it's updated automatically almost every couple hours.
Lastly, the ability to comment on our own apps from the dev console would be great so I could respond to buyer comments since we are not allowed to buy our own apps.
For the proper Market website, and push-to-phone on purchase to initiate the install, you're describing what Google showed at their Android demo at I/O earlier this year.
Likewise, I can't feel but screwed by the new Chrome Web Store not supporting Google Checkout Merchant accounts from countries other than United States and UK. Thanks a lot for the competitive edge guys.
I'm scrambling to implement a payment processor as soon as I can, but the lack of simple one-click purchase will surely impact sales.
The Merchant forum is bloated with requests for expanding the service to other countries since the day they rolled it out. A mildly comforting assurance that the expansion is in the works is all they managed to reply for three years now.
Seriously dropping the ball (compared to Apple) from a developer perspective.
The Market is expanding to 18 other countries in the next 2 weeks, which means this is probably the last chance for interested researchers to nail down before and after piracy figures. Results will be really interesting.
I'm happy because my apps are about to get an insane amount of exposure.
I am rooting for you, but I hope your understand that if there are pages upon pages of similar apps in the app store, your effort has already been marginalized. Good exposure it good, but it must hit a home run, or you are going to be called out.
Luckily I already feel like I've hit a home run. I'm fortunate enough to have a top 20 game in one category and over half a million downloads, lots of good feedback, and great ratings.
Right now, the thought of adding countries is more exciting than not. It's like I'm about to get a second at-bat.
My fear of competition is that I get a competitor who can update features even faster than I can.
im in the same boat. i figure there will be a short term positive but in the long term i hope i dont get too much competition in my little android niche.
Off topic, but the Android Developer Blog's use of frames to always show navigation is really horrible. I've to use my mouse or TAB before scrolling with J/arrow-down. Haven't they heard about 'position: fixed'?
The market is one of the weakest aspects of Android IMO, hopefully they'll add more features soon.