"IBitmapDescriptorFactory is not initialized" error

Move your code to be called onMapReady(), a callback provided by the GoogleMaps API.

Call following in onCreate()

try {
        MapsInitializer.initialize(getApplicationContext());
    } catch (GooglePlayServicesNotAvailableException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

This happened to me and finally In my case what I could find was the google play services were not installed. So installed them and app did not crash. So may be one can put try and a dialog saying so in the catch block.

Call MapsInitializer.initialize(getApplicationContext()) in the onCreate()