PapayaMobile launches Android App of the Day

Papaya is best known for its mobile social platform dubbed PapayaMobile, which offers a variety of features from gaming to chat to photo sharing. Unlike many others in the space, PapayaMobile recently elected to abandon support for the iPhone OS in favor of focusing all of its efforts on Android apps. The benefit of this is the open-source nature of the Google platform, which means that SDK developers can create their own programs to run in the Papaya interface. This functionality makes the service perfectly suited to its newest offering: Android App of the Day.

Android App of the Day, which is accessible both on Android devices and via the Web site AndroidAppOfTheDay.net, provides consumers with a simple and hassle-free way to discover new apps for free or at a discount. At the same time, the service caters to the needs of developers by letting them feature an app in a highly visible container for 24 hours. For both parties, this helps to alleviate the reliance on discovering new content via the Android Marketplace, which doesn't provide the best interface for viewing popular and promoted apps.

For an app to qualify for the service, developers must offer it for free for the day, or lower the price to 99-cents. Apps that are already free must provide a discount on virtual currency for the day. At the very least, Android users will get some kind of deal, and developers will get the visibility associated with a network of over four million PapayaMobile users. (Plus, those who sign up by September 12 will get to submit and feature their apps for free.) Papaya estimates that the service will generate anywhere from 10,000 to one million additional downloads per month for featured games.