Must-know: Play Store is driving growth at Google

Google marks Play Store as a fast growing business for the company

In the previous part of the series, we discussed Google’s (GOOGL) 2Q14 earnings and why its cost-per-click metric declined. However, Google is trying to offset the slowdown in its core search advertising market by increasing its focus on other business lines such as Google Play Store and YouTube. Google reported that its “Other” division’s revenue grew at a rate of 53% year-over-year (or YoY) to $1.6 billion. The company mentioned that this division’s growth was primarily driven by sales of applications and content from Google’s Play Store.

Google introduced new content on Play Store

During the conference call to announce second quarter earnings, Google’s management mentioned that it has already paid more than $5 billion to developers through Play Store. The management mentioned that Play Movies is now available in 90 countries. In the last quarter it added Argentina, Poland, and Czech Republic. The company also mentioned that it recently signed deals with CBS (CBS) and Viacom (VIAB) for bringing the TV content to Play Store.

Google Play Store reach on mobile only next to Facebook

According to a report from Comscore and as the previous chart shows, Google’s Play Store smartphone applications, or apps, reach in the U.S. is next only to Facebook (FB). Interestingly, Google’s other platforms such as YouTube, Google Search, and Gmail also figure in the top six ranked players in terms of smartphone app reach. Only the Pandora (P) app makes its way in this list in addition to Facebook and Google properties.