How will the appearance of Google Play on Chrome OS affect the earnings of Android developers?

Personal computers based on Chrome OS will receive Google Play with the ability to install any Android applications from it. Google told about this the other day as part of I/O 2016. We talked to experts about how this will affect the market.

How significantly will this step affect the income of Android developers?

Andrey Ivashentsev, Innovation Director at Game Insight
Given the pace of sales of Chromebooks abroad, the share of devices in the market will continue to grow.

A cloud OS and devices from $150 with a large number of applications is an unusual and interesting offer for the Enterprise and Education segments. Having a full-fledged store with a large number of applications will certainly make the platform more attractive to the end user, and the only question is who he is.

Will companies allow their employees to play at work?

It is unlikely, but at the same time businesses will be able to centrally deploy the necessary commercial software to all devices. An alternative option is when employees will use a Chromebook as their main device at home: then they may well play and consume paid services.

Will children in schools use payment methods to pay for apps?

Most likely not, but schools and institutes will be able to centrally install software for all students, and the segment of children’s and educational applications will benefit from this.

Sergey Kopov, Head of Publishing at HeroCraft
Here, as always, with a new platform.

In theory, a new market and joy. In practice, it is necessary to wait until the audience appears. At the moment, the reasons why Chromebooks will be bought up en masse are not obvious to me. On the other hand, the adaptation is likely to improve the developer’s relationship with Google, which will help to get an unplanned feature in the main market

Valentin Merzlikin, evangelist of Creative Mobile publishing
Immediately – it will not affect in any way.

The declared support for Android applications at the Chrome OS level will affect only new devices on this platform, which are planned to be delivered this year. The existing chromebook fleet is also small compared to the volume of the Google Play market.

For app (and game) developers, chromebooks are nothing more than an additional segment of mid–range tablets. Google Play continues to grow due to the activation of new Android devices. If Chrome OS support increases the number of potential users by another 5-10 million by the end of the year, we won’t even notice it.

Ask yourself the question – how much money do you earn from installations on BlueStacks? I would suggest focusing on the same order of digits.

Artur Ostapenko, Founder and CEO of Avallon Alliance
If we look at the cosmic growth of the BlueStacks platform, we can conclude that the idea of playing mobile games on desktops works.

I think it will work no worse on Chrome OS.

However, the market for Google Play devices is already huge, and the addition of chromebooks will not affect developers’ income in any significant way.

What problems does the promised compatibility of Android apps with Chrome apps pose to developers?

Andrey Ivashentsev, Innovation Director at Game Insight
According to the announcement, Google Play and Android app support will be built-in at the operating system level, not the browser.

Accordingly, we are not talking about emulation, but about native application support through the Apps Runtime for Chrome platform. There are already about 2 billion of them on Google Play. They are of very different quality, written for a variety of form factors and with a variety of mechanics.

Obviously, the advantage will be given to those developers who have experience with both touch and conventional screens, mouse and keyboard. We at Game Insight have already gone this way more than once, adapting our games to a variety of platforms, including desktops.

Sergey Kopov, Head of Publishing at HeroCraftAdapting the interface will be the most expensive task.

As far as I understood from the announcement, Google did not promise any technical difficulties.

Valentin Merzlikin, evangelist of Creative Mobile publishing
The screen resolution, processor power, and memory size impose not such serious restrictions on the developer as the growing segment of inexpensive Android devices.

I wouldn’t strain myself if I were the developers. Google will not cut its “golden egg-laying chicken” and punish applications that do not support thin PC clients.

Artur Ostapenko, Founder and CEO of Avallon Alliance
I don’t see any problems, in most cases 1-5 days of one programmer’s work will be enough for the application to become compatible.

Is it worth waiting for a similar step from Apple?Andrey Ivashentsev, Innovation Director at Game Insight

At the moment, Chrome OS and OS X are in different weight categories and most OS X users already have an iPhone or iPad, where they run all the applications they need.

Apple has extremely high standards of quality and usability, and we would not bet that they would allow mobile or tablet touch-first applications to run on non-touch computers.

Another thing is the prospects and potential for unification of development between iOS and OS X, which will allow developers to more conveniently produce universal applications for both platforms.

We can definitely say that with the arrival of Google Play on Chrome OS, laptops for $150 dollars will play a new meaning for ordinary consumers outside the Education and Enterprise segments, and the choice of the first computer in the affordable (low-end) price category will be between Windows 10 and Chrome OS.

Sergey Kopov, Head of Publishing at HeroCraftMicrosoft has moved to a unified platform.

Google promises to merge Chrome OS and Android. On the one hand, there is a trend, on the other, I do not see the economic prerequisites for the merger of Mac OS and iOS. They even separated tvOS from iOS, although it would seem that there are minimal differences.

Valentin Merzlikin, evangelist of Creative Mobile publishing
I’m not sure if the step will be the same.

There has been talk about merging Mac and iOS platforms for a long time – all Mac OS X updates look like steps in this direction. But for Apple, both platforms make good money, and they do not need to repeat any Microsoft or Google solutions in this area.

Artur Ostapenko, Founder and CEO of Avallon Alliance
I doubt it very much.