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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

#61

Post by mgcross »

houseabsolute wrote: post #39
melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I know that some games are direct ports of their iPhone versions. It doesn't make sense why they would be worth the money on the iPhone but not on Android.

It makes a little sense. Demographics is one aspect -- people who buy Android tend to be cheap, and don't like paying for quality. Or else they would own iPhones. :) The required flamebait out of the way, let me get to my real points. (Well, this was a real point too, but said as offensively as possible, which the remaining are not.) Another issue is market construction. Think about walking by a luxury goods store. I…

Agreed, for the most part. I've got an N1 and a serious case of iPhone game envy. But Angry Birds is coming to Android, PopCap is committed to Android, and Unity 3.0 will support Android.

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

#62

Post by binarycheese »

Google thinks they can have lightning hit the same spot twice .i.e. crowd sourcing. It worked with Google Search but for the Android platform, Google will have to actually do some PR work. As an android developer, I got pretty frustrated by the lack of clear documentation and their horrible API. Chances are, if you are used to the Sun Java API (or even C# API), trying to develop in Android will easily get your frustrated with the Android API. Method names sound alien or don't really mean what they imply. Also, the whole XML resourced-based format prevents you from easily creating components dynamically (through java code) and referencing them in more than one project.

I could go on and on...

Even the Developer portal on the Android Market is just horrible. I'm not sure what they were trying to accomplish.

- 2 screen shots???

- extremely limited description?

- No clear text box for "Update Reason"?

- You can't respond to user ridiculous comments?

- Sometimes my paid apps get cancelled after two days of purchase

P/S: I have more than 1/2 million combined downloads

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

#63

Post by mcantor »

nuclear_eclipse wrote: post #58
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…

Android apps I've bought: - AndChat (great multi-server IRC client with support for SSL, handles connectivity changes far better than any other client for Android) - RoboDefense (which btw doesn't have a screenshot because it's targetted at Android 1.5) - Flight Director - Hard Copy (excellent Instapaper app by an HN fellow) - Locale (amazing contextual settings application, well worth the high price) - Smart Keyboar…

ConnectBot is better than many desktop SSH clients I've used.

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

#64

Post by watmough »

Here's some information about the Android installed base by country.

http://www.techinfospotlight.com/2010/05/phone-os-market-sti...

The big takeaway for me is that 75% of Android phones able to access AdMob are in the North America, versus about 50% of iOS installed-base in North America!

Quote: "Over half of Apple’s sales are now outside the US. AdMob’s figures indicate 49% of the iPhone OS devices reaching its advertisement network are in North The united states, while 28% are in Western Europe, 14% are in Asia & 10% are elsewhere around the globe. For Android, a whopping 75% of the installed base visible to AdMob are in North The united states, with only 11% finding their way to Western Europe. A similar 12% are present in Asia, while less than 3% are in use elsewhere on the globe."

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

#65

Post by nanairo »

wvenable wrote: post #29
gregholland wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They do have an incentive... but an incentive to make developers use ads-subsiadised apps. Maybe that was their main strategy all along, and they told the carriers they could keep any money made on the store to get some traction (and to avoid the carriers creating their own stores).

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

#66

Post by enjo »

binarycheese wrote: post #62

Google thinks they can have lightning hit the same spot twice .i.e. crowd sourcing. It worked with Google Search but for the Android platform, Google will have to actually do some PR work. As an android developer, I got pretty frustrated by the lack of clear documentation and their horrible API. Chances are, if you are used to the Sun Java API (or even C# API), trying to develop in Android will easily get your frustr…

Ok this is just wrong on so many levels.

It's trivial to create interface elements on the fly, even when using XML resources. You're not under any obligation to even define things using XML if you don't want to (and some more dynamic apps don't).

There are some issues with the way things are named (a spinner is not what you think it is), it's really a pretty small issue. I find the API's to be fairly well documented and fairly straightforward. A large amount of the standard Java library is available as well.

The app-store is a complete and utter mess and I think Google knows it. I fully expect them to address it in their next release (I hope).

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

#67

Post by dpcan »

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…

Some people are finding apps they want to buy. I've sold my games to thousands, and it just keeps getting better.

Sure, the quality of a lot of apps stinks. There seems to be a lot of trademark infringement going on, and I don't really understand the success of the emulators, but all that aside, many of us creating legitimate apps are making money - so people ARE buying apps.

Going back to the article, the main problem for me is NOT that I can't sell to some countries yet, it's that I want some simple and basic improvements to the Market. Market updates only seem to come along once in a blue moon. For example, I was selling for months before I was able to view comments in the Dev Console.

#1 update needed in my opinion: Let me write more than 325 characters to describe the game I've worked months creating.

For the most part, I'm grateful the Market exists and is so easy to use because it's helping to support my family, and I run a game company now... so, dream come true.

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

#68

Post by binarycheese »

enjo wrote: post #66
binarycheese wrote: post #62

Google thinks they can have lightning hit the same spot twice .i.e. crowd sourcing. It worked with Google Search but for the Android platform, Google will have to actually do some PR work. As an android developer, I got pretty frustrated by the lack of clear documentation and their horrible API. Chances are, if you are used to the Sun Java API (or even C# API), trying to develop in Android will easily get your frustr…

Ok this is just wrong on so many levels. It's trivial to create interface elements on the fly, even when using XML resources. You're not under any obligation to even define things using XML if you don't want to (and some more dynamic apps don't). There are some issues with the way things are named (a spinner is not what you think it is), it's really a pretty small issue. I find the API's to be fairly well documented…

You obviously don't develop large/similar applications do you?

We have custom controls (text boxes, listviews, dynamic formviews) that inherit from Android controls, that are reused over 15+ applications. It was hell building them scratch because the main app was a Java library (not an android app so the XML resources are useless).

I don't think you even understand what I'm saying. For example: Can you explain to me why the CheckedTextView control is available in XML but the class itself is abstract?

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

#69

Post by danielsoneg »

megablast wrote: post #42
danielsoneg wrote: post #38

I'm an android guy, but I bought an iPad recently, and I think the author's missing a huge chunk of the issue here: Design & Culture. There is a big, big difference between how Google & Apple handle paid-for purchases - on Android, you get a confirmation screen, you have to verify the purchase, and you get 24hrs to return it. On iOS, you press a button and the app starts downloading. It's almost frighteningly fast -…

You normally have to put in your password as well, unless you have chosen to skip that step in itunes, which seems a pretty silly thing to do.

Yeah, but only once per 10min or so, and if you've just done an update or any of a range of other activities, that password is still valid. Once the password is in, no confirmation.

And yeah, agreed, skipping the password box is just dangerous - WAY too easy to spend money there.

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

#70

Post by evilduck »

houseabsolute wrote: post #39
melling wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I know that some games are direct ports of their iPhone versions. It doesn't make sense why they would be worth the money on the iPhone but not on Android.

It makes a little sense. Demographics is one aspect -- people who buy Android tend to be cheap, and don't like paying for quality. Or else they would own iPhones. :) The required flamebait out of the way, let me get to my real points. (Well, this was a real point too, but said as offensively as possible, which the remaining are not.) Another issue is market construction. Think about walking by a luxury goods store. I…

"Two screenshots compressed at just insane levels like Google has run out of hard drives, and four hundred characters for a description. That puts anyone in the mood to spend, right?"

I know it doesn't really remedy much of the problem, but if you click on the screenshots, they become fullscreen and don't appear to be of lossy-quality. (I'm using 2.1)

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