NBCU’s Peacock Android App Failed to Show Up in Google Play Listings on Launch Day

Todd Spangler
·4 min read

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UPDATED: Users searching for the Android app for Peacock, NBCUniversal’s streaming service that made its U.S. national debut Wednesday, came up empty when they tried to find it in the Google Play store.

In fact, the Peacock app for Android currently is available on Google Play at this link. But for much of the day, Peacock TV app was not showing up in searches or on other pages in the Google Play store, leading to confusion about how to get it.

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In reply to users’ inquiries Wednesday morning about why the app wasn’t available in the Google Play store, Peacock’s Twitter account was responding with the same message: “Keep an eye on our page for updates on when the bird has landed!”

By 3:15 p.m. ET, according to a Google rep, searches for “Peacock” were correctly returning listings. (A few hours earlier, searches for “Peacock” did not return listings for the app while searches for “Peacock TV” and “Peacock app” did.) It’s not clear why Google Play was not showing listings for Peacock’s Android app. A Google spokesperson said the Peacock TV app was published to the Google Play Store on Tuesday night (July 14) but it took the company several hours to fix the search glitch.

According to Peacock, the service’s app is compatible with Android versions 6.0 or above, as well as for Android TVs (with the Android 5.1 operating system). It’s worth noting that when developers submit their apps to Google Play or Apple’s App Store, they do not control the exact timing of when the apps go live.

Meanwhile, the Peacock app for Apple’s iOS on iPhone, iPad and Apple TV also became available late Tuesday evening. As of Wednesday morning, Peacock was trending as the No. 10 app in the App Store’s Entertainment apps rankings — and had hit No. 1 in the category by mid-afternoon.

Peacock is available in two main tiers: Peacock Premium, with more than 20,000 hours of programming (up from NBCU’s previous 15,000 target), and Peacock Free, which will include a subset of that with over 13,000 hours.

Under NBCU’s deal with Google, users who download the Android and Android TV app via Google Play are eligible to receive three months of free access to Peacock Premium with ads (i.e. through Oct. 15, 2020), which is normally $4.99/month.

Besides the Android release snafu, Peacock out of the gate is absent from Roku and Amazon’s Fire TV devices because of disputes over distribution terms (similar to WarnerMedia’s HBO Max). Peacock also is not available on Samsung’s Smart TVs, another major over-the-top video platform. In addition to Apple and Google platforms and devices, Peacock is available on Microsoft’s Xbox One, Vizio and LG internet TVs, on the web at peacocktv.com, and on Comcast and Cox set-tops. Support for Sony PlayStation 4 is coming starting the week of July 20.

NBCU, as the last major media company to take the OTT field with Peacock, is leaning into the free, ad-supported version. With the Peacock tagline “free as a bird,” NBCU is trying to tap into consumers’ “subscription fatigue” in the saturated U.S. streaming market.

Peacock Free is available to anyone in the U.S., serving up what NBCU promises is no more than 5 minutes of ads per hour. The Peacock Premium (with ads) tier costs $4.99 per month (while it is included for no extra charge for Comcast and Cox cable subscribers). The ad-free premium-tier is $9.99 per month, available for an additional $5 per month to Comcast and Cox subscribers.

Click here for highlights of the content available on Peacock Free and Peacock Premium, as well as what originals and other TV shows, movies and sports are coming later.

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