Android Market

10 billion downloads? Cool. 10-cent apps? Nifty. Now Android needs to get people used to, and even excited for, paying full price.

Want to install Google Maps on your brand-new, fresh-out-of-the-box Kindle Fire? You can't, because the stock Kindle Fire is limited to downloading apps from the Amazon Appstore. If you love to tinker with devices and improve them, however, you can follow our separate guide to rooting your Kindle Fire. Afterward, you can use your newfound superuser powers to install the Google Android Market on your device. It isn't a simple process, but it is pretty straightforward--and it's worth the time if you wish to turn your $200 Kindle Fire into a robust Android tablet.

The new client, which also features an improved UI, is intended to boost app selling opportunities

Google removed more malware-infected applications from its Android Market last week, according to a security researcher who reported the rogue software to the company.

The four major mobile apps stores run by Apple, Google, Nokia and Research in Motion should pull in a combined $3.8 billion in revenue this year, according to research firm IHS.

Google said during the company's earnings call on Thursday that more than 3 billion apps have been installed from the Android Market so far, and around 350,000 smartphones are activated every day. The new figures highlight the exceptional growth of Android, but when it comes to app stores, Apple's is still king.

The professional networking site LinkedIn has finally announced the availability of an application for Android-based smartphones.

After months of chatter, Amazon's Appstore for Android is live and ready for download. But are two app stores better than one? Let's do a quick comparison with the Android Market to see if the Amazon Appstore is worth an install.

A security researcher lost a sure $15,000 at this week's Pwn2Own hacking contest because he had earlier reported the bug to Google, which has patched the vulnerability in its Android Market.

Google will build new safeguards into Android Market, its application store for the Android mobile OS, following an attack that infected thousands of phones and forced the company to wipe the malware remotely from phones, it said late Saturday.

Openness, one of Android's big advantages, can also be the Achilles' heel of the platform. Google has pulled the kill switch on 21 free malware apps from the Android Market and from around 50,000 devices, according to reports. The apps were free illegal downloads of popular apps in the Android Market, repackaged with malware able to steal details from a user's phone.

Online search giant Google is in the process of assembling an in-house braintrust to crank out applications for the exploding mobile device market.