Licensing & selling an Android app

Andrew Henshaw henshaw at me.com
Sat Jun 2 16:41:44 EDT 2012


I have an app in both the Google Play and Amazon stores,  and find Google is the much better option for me.

With the Amazon system you have to submit every update for review and then wait.  If you want to withdraw a product from sale you have to write to them.  With the Google system you can simply upload a new apk,  activate it and its good to go.  You can also remove it from sale,  change the price etc etc.  Also sales wise,  for me the Google store sells in a 6/1 ratio compared to the Amazon store.  

A couple of things to watch are, as mentioned beforeand unlike the Apple store,  you cannot switch a product from free to paid,  and the manifest is used to work out the devices the app will run on and this will include Android tablets bey default so make sure you app resizes to all the different Android resolutions or wait for the negative reviews to roll in.

As far as protection on Android goes,  I dont think ive seen an app that has not been cracked and is not available for download through a torrent site.   My apps rely on quite a lot of interaction with a web feed,  so I can simply change the location of the feed between releases which renders any cracked copies useless.  Its not ideal,  but the best I can do with my abilities at the moment.

Andy


On 2 Jun 2012, at 19:14, Richard Miller wrote:

> Thanks, Colin.
> 
> The problem I have with Amazon is that it is U.S. only, and many of our customers are elsewhere.
> 
> Sounds like you used Google Play. Did you go without the encryption option? Did you somehow use in-app purchasing or simply publish a paid app?
> 
> Thanks.
> Richard
> 
> 
> 
> On 6/2/2012 9:51 AM, Colin Holgate wrote:
>> Amazon is more straightforward. Not sure if they have the same DRM options you have in Google Play. With Google Play you can take an easy route, and hope there isn't too much piracy, or you can go for another option they have that somehow encrypts the app to make sure it will only play on the purchaser's devices.
>> 
>> One big thing to watch out for is that when you first submit an app to Google Play, and haven't yet set up how they will pay you, the app will be instantly available as a free app. You're not allowed to charge for an app that started off as a free app. That can be solved by creating a new app with a different app ID, but that's a shame to have to do, just because you didn't notice that your app was placed as a free one.
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