Google Play is the primary application store for the Android operating system.
It is available on most Android devices, and Google Play comes pre-installed on devices that support it.
An exhaustive list of supported devices is available on Google’s website, but it includes most major Android smartphones.
Many tablets also work with the Google Play store when they use Android as the operating system, such as Samsung’s Galaxy tab.
This means that the majority of devices overall support Google Play; Android has an 80.7 percent market share in operating systems, according to Gartner’s latest figures examining the market and the closest contender as an operating system is iOS.
Devices that won’t work with the Google Play store include Apple and Windows devices, and BlackBerry devices apart from the Priv.
Unlike with iOS, here are several other major app stores for Android including the Amazon app store and Slide ME and F-Droid.
Google announced recently that it was expanding access to the Google Play store to its Chrome devices, so that applications designed for Android can now appear on these cheaper laptops.
Google Play was first launched by Google in 2012, and between Q1 2012 and Q1 2016 downloads rose by 3.8 times, according to figures by App Annie.
In the same period, global revenue for Google Play increased by 35.7 times.
The recent App Annie report on Google Play found that games were the most popular apps in terms of downloads from the store. They account for 40 percent of all-time downloads and 90 percent of all-time revenue. The most popular games by number of downloads are Subway Surfers, Candy Crush Saga, Pou, Temple Run 2 and Hill Climb Racing.
Apart from games, communications and social apps are highly downloaded.
The top 5 apps by all-time downloads are Facebook, Whatsapp Messenger, Facebook Messenger, Instagram and Clean Master.
Meanwhile, the top 5 apps by all-time revenue are LINE, LINE PLAY, Line Manga, Pandora Radio and KakaoTalk.
