Options for selling Android apps

[Richard Miller]

Thanks for the input.

In our case, we want to focus on selling the Android app through our web 
site. Our app has a targeted market we can reach. Because of that, we 
need to build in an update mechanism.

As far as anti-piracy goes, I was thinking of assigning a unique ID to 
each app, which gets checked each time the app starts. The app won't run 
without it. Is there any reason a scheme like this would not work? Seems 
easy to implement it.



On 5/12/2012 10:51 PM, J. Landman Gay wrote:
> On 5/12/12 7:33 PM, Richard Miller wrote:
>> Through my investigating online, it seems to be necessary to build in
>> some type of anti-piracy scheme into Android apps... much the same as
>> would be done for a desktop app.
>
> The Google Play Store offers something but I didn't bother. I'm not 
> sure how a developer would implement it on their own. I haven't seen 
> anyone do that.
>
>>
>> Also of concern is the issue of app updates. I found this about updates:
>>
>> "You just /upload/ a new apk file, which should have a higher version
>> code and a higher version number than the previous apk."
>>
>> It seems that I need to write LC code into my app to check (each time it
>> starts up) if an updated version is available. If there is, I simply
>> alert the user to load the new version, which... as long as it is signed
>> with the same private key and uses the same package name... will simply
>> replace the outdated version.
>
> It's much easier than that. Each time you build an update, increase 
> the version code in the standalone settings by at least one. That's 
> all you need to do. You should also increase the version number for 
> reference, though that's not the critical part for updates. When you 
> upload the new build, the Android stores (both Google and Amazon) see 
> that the code number has changed and will notify everyone who has it 
> installed that there's an update. You don't have to do anything, it's 
> all automatic.
>