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Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

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Re: Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

#21

Post by gregholland »

orangecat wrote: post #13
gregholland wrote: post #11

Google also has a vested interest in keeping as many apps free as possible. Most free apps makes use of Admob (Google) as their primary source of revenue, this means that Google gets a cut of this. But for paid apps, the 30% that gets taken away from your sales goes to the carrier instead and Google does not see a cent of this. Therefore by limiting the number of countries from which developers can publish apps, as w…

But for paid apps, the 30% that gets taken away from your sales goes to the carrier instead Do you have a source for that? As far as I know you pay for apps using Google Checkout and the carrier never enters into it.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10072682-94.html

quote

"One difference the mobile phone industry might well find appealing: Apple keeps the remaining revenue, but Google gives it to wireless service carriers, minus billing settlement fees."

Re: Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

#22

Post by jsz0 »

I haven't found any Android apps worth buying. I look through the paid apps section now and again and it seems to be very utility-centirc. I'm not going to pay for a backup tool, file manager, ROM manager, over-clocking utility, task manager, etc. Of course you don't have to. The free versions of these apps are good enough. Then you have an assortment of weather apps, alarm clocks, etc. Again stuff that just doesn't justify even 99 cents to me. I don't keep up on exchange rates so I generally won't buy anything that's listed in Euros because I'm not sure if it's worth it or not. For games the #1 game, Robo Defense, doesn't even have a screenshot so there's absolutely no chance I will buy it. 2 of the other apps in the top 5 are emulators that will require me to go find ROMs. The Android market just kind of feels like a bad Windows shareware site to me. It's lacking instant gratification.

Re: Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

#23

Post by ars »

TeHCrAzY wrote: post #7
jbellis wrote: post #6

In a similar vein, some of the best apps are made by non-US developers, but neither of my [American] credit cards works buying apps in non-USD. (Not sure if Apple has the same limitation, or whether they "solve" that problem by only showing American apps, but I never ran into it there.)

Thats a limitation with your credit cards. Mine can bill in any currency required (obviously, followed by a currency conversion fee, and the conversion itself being completed at rates seemingly VERY favorable to the bank/cc company).

Actually the exchange rates are quite good.

But many (not all!) banks will charge a fee (1- 3%) on top of that.

Re: Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

#24

Post by SoftwareMaven »

whatusername wrote: post #15
Rabidgremlin wrote: post #4

Although you CAN buy apps on the New Zealand market place, as a developer in New Zealand, you CANNOT sell any apps! As a developer you need to be in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom or United States to set up a merchant account. I had an email conversion with Tim Bray about this... He said: "I hear you. We're working on lots more countries. It's an amazing amount of work to d…

Hell - we might not be able to buy iphone/android games in Australia in a few weeks: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/apps-and-game...

Well, you wouldn't be able to find them anyway, thanks to the Great Barrier Firewall. :(

Re: Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

#25

Post by caf »

whatusername wrote: post #15
Rabidgremlin wrote: post #4

Although you CAN buy apps on the New Zealand market place, as a developer in New Zealand, you CANNOT sell any apps! As a developer you need to be in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom or United States to set up a merchant account. I had an email conversion with Tim Bray about this... He said: "I hear you. We're working on lots more countries. It's an amazing amount of work to d…

Hell - we might not be able to buy iphone/android games in Australia in a few weeks: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/apps-and-game...

Oh bloody hell, this isn't a problem with the Apple or Google app stores, it's a problem with the ridiculous censorship regime itself.

Re: Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

#26

Post by donaq »

nl wrote: post #12
Rabidgremlin wrote: post #4

Although you CAN buy apps on the New Zealand market place, as a developer in New Zealand, you CANNOT sell any apps! As a developer you need to be in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom or United States to set up a merchant account. I had an email conversion with Tim Bray about this... He said: "I hear you. We're working on lots more countries. It's an amazing amount of work to d…

Here's the list of countries: http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an... I'm _amazed_ that Google hasn't fixed this. Apple didn't have the problem at all, and I don't understand why it is taking Google so long.

Me too. I'm in Singapore and, say what you will about the way the country is governed, but they always make it easy for business to be conducted here. If Google is actually trying here, I'd be very interested to know what difficulties they're experiencing.

Re: Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

#27

Post by mechanical_fish »

nonane wrote: post #20
mechanical_fish wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The secret is that Apple did all the groundwork years in advance, as part of rolling out the Apple Stores, the iTunes Music Store, et cetera.

Doesn't Google already have a way to remit money to adsense partners across the world?

Presumably. But AdSense is a rather different business.

Consider: I don't think advertising is subject to sales tax. Here's New York State on the subject:

http://nystax.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/nystax.cfg/php/enduser/st...

When you go into a product business you may have a different set of legal issues to consider. It's also B2C rather than B2B, which changes the sort of customer service you need and (I'm guessing) dramatically increases your vulnerability to things like chargebacks and stolen credit cards.

Re: Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

#28

Post by eli »

jsz0 wrote: post #22

I haven't found any Android apps worth buying. I look through the paid apps section now and again and it seems to be very utility-centirc. I'm not going to pay for a backup tool, file manager, ROM manager, over-clocking utility, task manager, etc. Of course you don't have to. The free versions of these apps are good enough. Then you have an assortment of weather apps, alarm clocks, etc. Again stuff that just doesn't…

Robo Defense (just like pretty much all popular paid games) also has a free version that includes the first few levels. It's a pretty fun game; I bought it.

And did you know you can easily return paid games or apps and get your money back within 24 hours?

Re: Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

#29

Post by wvenable »

gregholland wrote: post #21
orangecat wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But for paid apps, the 30% that gets taken away from your sales goes to the carrier instead Do you have a source for that? As far as I know you pay for apps using Google Checkout and the carrier never enters into it.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-10072682-94.html quote "One difference the mobile phone industry might well find appealing: Apple keeps the remaining revenue, but Google gives it to wireless service carriers, minus billing settlement fees."

With Google not getting revenue from the Android store, they have no incentive to improve it in any way. They won't be nearly as concerned about their developers making money, either. It sounds like a terrible plan all around.

Re: Why Android devs are losing money, and it’s not due to piracy

#30

Post by jberryman »

nonane wrote: post #5
gamble wrote: post #3

Before poo-poo'ing the idea, consider that a conspiracy isn't required for Google to be unconcerned with paid app sales. Android only exists because Google was afraid of being cut out of mobile search advertising. Their priority has been getting a competitive OS with a prominent Google search box on as many handsets as possible. Paid app revenue is something of a sideshow. (Even with paid apps, Android isn't going to…

The paid App Store or Android market will never be a revenue stream for Apple or Google. In fact it is probably designed to be break-even at best. They need interesting apps to push their respective platforms further - that's where the gold mine is for both companies (apple gets to sell more hardware and goog gets more searches)

I guess the app store has accounted for about 1% of Apple's profits since 2008:

http://www.cultofmac.com/analyst-app-store-just-1-percent-of...

Seems like a pretty huge return on investment, although a small percentqge of their overall profits. Hilariously most of Apple's percentage of an app sale goes to CC companies

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