I was browsing the web on my Android tab last week when I came across a type of app in Android Market that I hadn’t seen before: tablet app indexes.

It’s about time!

Google isn’t really on the ball when it comes to Android Market, probably because they are an advertising business, not an app selling business. To Google, Android OS was all about stopping iOS and Microsoft becoming dominant which would have permitted them to cut Google out of the advertising market.

You can see what I’m referring to just by taking a look at the web version of Android Market. At the moment, the two top sections, “Featured” and “Trending apps” largely list the same items just in different orders. The “Best Selling Games” section is mostly composed of the 10c deal games from a few weeks ago because all those downloads they got threw out the averages and pushed them to the top of the rankings.

Boring.

Then we come to the “Featured Tablet Apps” section which appears to just have been slapped onto the market with no thought at all. It’s basically the same Featured app list all over again, just with any completely tablet incompatible ones excluded.

Not only is this situation awful for discovering new apps, it’s even worse for people who’ve just taken delivery of a shiny new dual or quad core tablet. If they don’t like what’s on offer or tire of the handful of apps on the “Featured Tablet Apps” list, then how are they supposed to find new ones that are designed to make proper use of all that lovely screen real estate?

That’s where the Tablified Market website or Tablified Market app for Android 3 or better come in, providing an indexing service that allows users to find new and interesting apps that work properly on their device.

The interesting thing about Tablified Market, and the feature that sets it  apart from Android Market, is that the list is curated. This means that the staff at Tablified Market actually install and check all the apps on their list to confirm that they were designed with tablets in mind.

This simple (though time consuming) action cuts out most of the fluff in the market and saves tablet owners a heap of time manually trawling the market looking for something that is both compatible and suitable for their pride and joy.

I’ll admit that I’m a little biased because I’ve just purchased advertising space for Solar Explorer on Tablified Market’s Android app. I looked at each of the indexing services on offer, and I came to the conclusion that this one is the only one with the right idea. By offering a vetted list of Android tablet apps, they are fulfilling a need that’s long been ignored by Google, and one that I believe is in part responsible for the slow uptake of Android tablets.

Tablified Market also does reviews.

I don’t expect Google will bring out a competing list any time soon, and even if they did, it wouldn’t be anywhere near the quality of Tablified Market’s index. Automated search algorithms just aren’t good enough to find apps that have been designed for tablets, which is something completely different to finding apps that are compatible with them.