Android Market updates announced by Google - Is a browser-based Market coming soon?

Google have spent Friday 17th November updating the Android Market experience. Here are a list of the new features:

- A “feature” graphic, landscape aspect ratio, 1024 x 500 (required).
- A high-res icon, 512 x 512 (required).. The Android icon design guidelines located at http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design.html apply.
- 2 screen shots, 320w x 480h, 480w x 854h, or 480w x 800h, increasing to 8 screen shots in the future (1 required).
- A link for a promotional video hosted on YouTube (optional).

Does this mean a new browser-based Android Market is on the way?

The additional screen shots, feature graphic and high-res icons suggests that Google is preparing developers for a browser-based version of the Android Market. This will be very welcome news if true, as it will hopefully help to solve some key problems for consumers and developers when it comes to finding great apps.

Android Market isn't searchable on the web. Doesn't this strike you as ironic given that Google has probably done more than any other company in human history to help make information more discoverable? Being able to search and discover apps on your browser would be a big step forward for Android.

Lower the barriers to purchasing apps. People are more comfortable entering their credit card details into a website than their phones at the moment. If Google can integrate Google Checkout efficiently into the browser-based Android Market and create a smooth process for signing-up, they will significantly reduce that first barrier to people actually buying apps. It isn't mobile billing yet, but it would be a good start.

Fingers crossed.

Source: MobileCrunch