Android paid applications available in SA

South African Android users have reason to celebrate today with paid applications becoming available locally in Google’s official Market for Android devices.

It was revealed in March 2011 that the paid Android Market was expected in the second quarter of 2011 and it was announced at Google IO yesterday that 99 additional countries would be receiving buyer support, of which South Africa would be one.

Before the evening was out South Africa’s Android community had discovered that the ability to buy applications from the Android Market had already been enabled for users on local networks.

Google’s announcement comes hot on the heels of Microsoft unveiling their intent to support a handful of countries for app creation and app commerce.

In addition to offering a host of countries access to the paid Android Market, Google also announced some new features for the service. These are:

1. New top app charts
2. Editor’s choice section
3. Top developers get a special icon
4. Better related apps section
5. Trending apps chart

Users that aren’t seeing paid applications in their Market yet should try clearing its settings and cache by finding Market in Settings > Applications > Manage Applications.

Android paid applications available in SA << Comments and views

Thanks to Karl Fischer and Johan Els for the tip and to ZADroid for the tutotial on clearing the Market application’s cache.