Tag: android market

About the lack of paid apps in the Android Market

You can buy Android apps from the Android Market in only 13 out of 46 countries and you can only develop paid apps in 9 countries.

Of course there are third party Android app stores but who knows about them? Do they advertise? Are they being promoted to potential Android buyers? How do operators fit in to this equation?

Google is an advertising company. Android’s existence is a vehicle to deliver ads in the mobile space. Having
a large library of universally accessible paid apps is counter to Google’s reason to have Android.

About the lack of paid apps in the Android Market

Google pulls apps too

Just as some people are up in arms about Apple pulling Camera+ from the App Store, the Cupertino company isn’t the only one with that prerogative. Google recently pulled EasyRoot from the Android Market because Verizon complained it allows Verizon Droid phones’ owners to circumvent Verizon’s hotspot policy even though it’s not a function of the app.

Rooting an Android phone is the same as jailbreaking an iOS device. It lets you access and enable functions not made available by the vendor. In Verizon’s case, rooting the Droids will let the owners share their phones’ internet connections via wifi freely, something that Verizon charges money for, despite the feature being standard on Android 2.2.

Just like Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Market has policies. Any app that violates those policies or receives complaints from significant enough parties will be removed. 

Google pulls apps too