6 ms·

Google "not happy" with slow Android app sales

56 points by sovande 16y ago

mopoke 16y ago
I'd happily buy Android apps if I could. Unfortunately in the country I live in, paid apps aren't available.
- fierarul 16y ago
  Exactly! I'm not interested in Android precisely because I cannot sell nor buy Android apps from my country. There is also very little demand from clients (compared to iOS). The problem for Google is that people from Romania have been able to buy and sell iOS apps since 2008 or so. I do desktop Java apps on OSX so it would actually have been a smoother transition to do some Android coding on the side, but I learned Objective-C instead. Then I bought iOS gear for testing so I really don't see myself doing an Android app very soon or buying an Android device. The International market seems to be a big problem: it's semi-amusing to read a new announcement and then look into the specifics to learn it is US-only or for a very limited subset of countries (the last ones I looked at were Amazon Kindle developer program, Amazon's new Android AppStore).
- thingie 16y ago
  What limitations are there now? I live in the Czech republic and I believed that paid apps would not be available there, but in the last week, I was able to buy anything I wanted, via google checkout, without any problems. Perhaps I've missed something.
  - zrgiu 16y ago
    here you go: http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138294 http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?hl... don't believe the "we're working hard to add more..." bs at the bottom, that list has been the unchanged for a long while now.
danteembermage 16y ago
The marketplace is terrible for discovering new content. The absence of anything like "top selling new apps this week" means scrolling through pages and pages of the same old stuff.
- robotron 16y ago
  Yeah, discovering new content is really not very enjoyable.
- scrrr 16y ago
  Not to mention the inability to browse on a desktop browser. I'd like a feature where I surf on the web and select apps, and later that day I press a "Sync" button of sorts and get the apps.
  - archivator 16y ago
    You just described appbrain.com Sure, it's not Google's baby but it's still a hell of a lot better than the Market. It's been my go-to place for new apps for a few months now.
    - pdaddyo 16y ago
      I still don't understand why Google haven't snapped up AppBrain and integrated with their market. It is the superior solution at the moment.
ebaysucks 16y ago
Funny how Google wants to implement a curator instead of the obvious solution: an Android app search engine. They tackle everything with algorithms, why not this problem?
- scotu 16y ago
  as far as I can tell from the quotes, no curator is going to implemented, it seams a simple speculation from appleinsider. I might be very wrong but to me seems like a statement that google is strengthening his efforts started with the market itself to kick out out-of-term-of-service apps. Not only malicious, see apps like kongragate, that was considered an alternative android market and so was pulled; it is no more in the market, this doesn't mean you cannot install it your way, legally and easily. The last two paragraphs are full of fud, BTW
zrgiu 16y ago
Maybe someone from google is reading this: PLEASE ALLOW THE REST OF THE F*ING WORLD TO SELL APPS.this is killing me here in Romania. I have 3 cool, good looking games (angry birds competitors), just sitting and waiting.
- antihero 16y ago
  That's one thing I've never got - the market has been out, what, years now and still they haven't bothered to sort out selling in other countries. What gives? Google is a giant multinational and even if there are legal issues, that's the reason they have a huge team of lawyers.
- fierarul 16y ago
  There is probably an opportunity cost because you aren't releasing the games as soon as possible. You might consider entering into some sort of deal with somebody that is able to publish your game or make an US (or whatever country is allowed) entity. Of course, this is much too complicated/expensive than it would be if Google would do their part. I'm also from Romania and this lack of support from Google is the reason I've only done iOS apps.
  - zrgiu 16y ago
    i've explored that road actually, and it's not really possible. Besides having a US/UK/[other allowed country] account, they also require you to have an actual address in that country. There have been several developers who have been publishing paid apps for other people and they got their accounts banned.
    - thomasz 16y ago
      ever thought about a Ltd?
    - nextparadigms 16y ago
      Angry Birds is making $1 million a month from ads on Android. Have you tried ads?
apakatt 16y ago
So first it took over a year for us in Sweden to get paid apps. Then it turns out that there is some bug which prevents "google for my domain"-users from buying Android-apps. Google Checkout with the same account works on a regular computer but not on my phone even though all other features work. So I have to create yet another GMail address and associate my credit card with it just so I can buy apps which I've been to lazy to do. Result: I've bought apps on my iPod touch which I never use but not once single a Android app even though I've used Android since the launch of the first dev-phone (2008).
andybak 16y ago
Their recent fancy-pants redesign made everything prettier, slower, more cluttered and added almost no new functionality. One of the devs had the nerve to post about how clever the resolution-independent swoosh at the top was. In my head I was yelling "stop fiddling with that and fix the frikkin search!"
- InclinedPlane 16y ago
  Indeed, the app-store is very un-googly at the moment. Google made their name in search by providing the highest quality results, that's certainly not the case with the app-store.
  - stretchwithme 16y ago
    their search results get more un-googly as time goes on as well.
  - korl 16y ago
    Your comment is just repeating what OP said.
- fluidcruft 16y ago
  The one thing I like about the new market is that it recovers from install hangs much better. Often I get apps that download 100% and just sit there doing nothing (i.e. not moving into install phase). In the old market the only thing that would work was to cancel the the entire install and try again (i.e. re-download the app from scratch) until it worked. With the new market, leaving that app's page and coming back seems to deliver a reliable kick in the ass to the process when it's frozen. That alone is worth any annoyances. For everything else, there's appbrain.
cormullion 16y ago
OK for a beta release though
stretchwithme 16y ago
Google should give up and license others to run competing Android app stores. Then someone will figure how to do international app sales and curate Android apps.
- db42 16y ago
  Even if google will not, someone(read amazon) is trying pretty hard :) http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/amazon-android-app-store/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/amazon-android-app-stor...
mycroftiv 16y ago
I believe there is an essential factor which isn't being articulated; the different demographics and psychology of android phone purchasers vs. iphone purchasers. I think Apple attracts a large portion of the "eager to spend money on technology" customer base. If you are someone who is eager to spend a lot of time playing with your phone, you are likely to buy an iphone. If you want smartphone functionality but are not inclined to make a hobby of your phone use, you are likely to buy an android phone. I love my android phone, but I am simply not interested in spending additional money on applications, and no matter how good app store search and discovery is and no matter how painless payment is, I can't imagine any phone application I would be interested in purchasing.
- arethuza 16y ago
  I don't really recognize the "eager to spend money" category - I've bought a fair amount of apps for my iPhone and iPad (mostly games for the iPad at the prompting of my 12 year old son) - the main reason I end up buying stuff is because it is so easy to do and the prices are generally so low that they are almost literally "sweetie money".
- thret 16y ago
  These two were the clincher for me: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/google-translate-real-time/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/google-translate-real... http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rush-poker-mobile/details http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rush-poker-mobile/details
- pohl 16y ago
  I think you're on to something, but I think "willingness to spend" might be more accurate than "eager to spend". I don't think it has anything to do with making a hobby out of phone use, either. Plenty of android users are eager to tweak & tinker & install & play around with their phones. They're just tight-fisted with their money, that's all. It seems to be a bit like linux users who — spoiled by the ability to freely download and install something that will do almost anything — wouldn't think to open their wallet to pay for software, no matter how good. Edit: iOS isn't immune to this kind of user, either. Just check out app reviews complaining about having to pay 1/5th what people would spend on coffee for an app. But the existence of tightwads isn't as bad a problem as an absence of paying customers. Android is like The Cheapskate Channel: all tightwads, all the time.
terhechte 16y ago
Soon on Daring Fireball: Short quote from that article and a "Uh Oh" :)
drtse4 16y ago
"Google also hopes to negotiate carrier billing agreements with scores of regional mobile providers, allowing users to buy apps and bill them to their mobile account." Hopes...? Implementing this (and extending the coverage of paied apps) will completely change the market. No need to signup for any additional service and to have a credit card (in Europe/rest of the world not as diffused as in the US). If their objective is really to increase the sales, this should be the most important thing to do and that needs more people working on, not updating the market site (although changes are needed).
warrenmiller 16y ago
but don't forget Google makes a lot of cash from advertising on free apps. They own Admob and Google Mobile Ads so have a good chunk of the Android advertising market. If an app gets purchased Google makes 30% of the sale, but with advertising they make between 15-35% for the lifetime of the app. Whats that worth? about a billion a year or so... http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7772.html http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7772.html
markessien 16y ago
Google has this idea in its head that the world should be html and web based. It wants a big server infra-structure and almost non-existent clients, because it IS a big server infrastructure. Google wants to be the platform that everyone is building on top, and take away the thick clients. Now, unfortunately for them, things don't seem to be swinging that way. The chrome app store is a bust, chrome-os is not working and people by far prefer the native apple app store, and the native apple apps to the server based offerings. However, google seems to not be paying attention to that. For their business, it would make so much sense if everything were running "in the cloud". That's what they would love, because they have the scale and opportunity to own this market. So they cripple Android app-selling, such that people don't bet too heavily on 'owned' native apps. They are trying to buy time till cloud based apps become more prevalent - which frankly, is a really really long time from now.
- orangecat 16y ago
  Everything I've seen from Google is that they're agnostic on native vs web apps. They're happy as long as you're using Google services and looking at Google ads.
lordmatty 16y ago
I've a friend whose company released a decent quality branded App on the Market recently. It was backed by a good amount of advertising/marketing and was pitched at the correct demographic. The total number of paid week one sales? 68
- orangecat 16y ago
  Which comes out to 3500 per year. That's not bad, and is in the ballpark of the median iOS app.
  - lordmatty 16y ago
    Thats week one with a big marketing push..we see at least that amount per day for our paid branded apps, and they have been around over a year and receive no marketing spend. I'm pretty sure the sales will drop off, like any iOS app.
jacquesm 16y ago
They've had their chance here, fancy Android phone, most frustrating experience with a phone since trying out a Samsung about three years ago (I hear they've since cleaned up their act). Absolutely terrible battery life, most frustrating user interface I've ever seen and a very rickety touch screen, next to impossible for me to type out a message with any speed (fat fingers I guess). I've passed it on to my s.o. who is pretty happy with it, I'm back to a very cheap nokia. Buying an Iphone is not an option because I don't want to support apple's mobile department as long as they're not going to drop their weird app-store terms. Never even got around to getting an android devkit before moving on.
- andybak 16y ago
  I think you meant to reply on that 'generic smart phone whinges' thread.
micubogdan 16y ago
A google search algorithm would use to make some cleaning.On the internet,the market is a free4all as well,but google search makes an order out of it.
mjangda 16y ago
I would gladly buy apps if I had space on my phone. Thanks to the crippling 512mb on my Nexus One I get to spend every 3rd day cleaning my phone (despite the fact that half my apps are already running off SD.)
nika 16y ago
One thing that Apple has that Google doesn't seem to have is an affiliate program. Affiliates get %5 of app sales (or other iTunes sales) by driving traffic to the store. This provides a funding mechanism to incentivize people to make discovery tools. I'm kinda impressed with the number of third party discovery tools for android, but I think that ecosystem would be more robust, and less of the burden on google, if they provided a monetization method for good app discovery. Apple just partnered with LinkShare and other providers of the service. Seems Google could do the same thing.
flawawa2 16y ago
I would happily buy some apps if I could pay anonymously (like with "cash").
gaiusparx 16y ago
Sounds like an excuse for their lame marketplace which paid apps are not available in many countries. They do not make it easy for developers of paid apps. Why are they not happy? They are cornering app developers into free app+ advertising model (eg AngryBirds) and they should be very happy with the fat AdMob dollars.
SoftwareMaven 16y ago
I'm surprised nobody is talking about Google moving to a curated model. I'm obviously comfortable with it, since I'm an iPhone owner; how do you Android people feel about it? That was supposed to be a major differentiator between the two marketplaces.
- dminor 16y ago
  They aren't moving to a curated model, just beefing up the team that enforces the Terms and Conditions. Probably overdue given the growth of the market.
bane 16y ago
All I want, and it's not too hard, is to separate free from paid apps, then apps from games, then be able to rank them by number of downloads or average rating. For search, AppBrain seems to have that pretty nailed down. (Actually the AppBrain app is miles better than the crappy one from Google).

56 points by sovande 16y ago

mopoke 16y ago

I'd happily buy Android apps if I could. Unfortunately in the country I live in, paid apps aren't available.

fierarul 16y ago
Exactly! I'm not interested in Android precisely because I cannot sell nor buy Android apps from my country. There is also very little demand from clients (compared to iOS). The problem for Google is that people from Romania have been able to buy and sell iOS apps since 2008 or so. I do desktop Java apps on OSX so it would actually have been a smoother transition to do some Android coding on the side, but I learned Objective-C instead. Then I bought iOS gear for testing so I really don't see myself doing an Android app very soon or buying an Android device. The International market seems to be a big problem: it's semi-amusing to read a new announcement and then look into the specifics to learn it is US-only or for a very limited subset of countries (the last ones I looked at were Amazon Kindle developer program, Amazon's new Android AppStore).
thingie 16y ago
What limitations are there now? I live in the Czech republic and I believed that paid apps would not be available there, but in the last week, I was able to buy anything I wanted, via google checkout, without any problems. Perhaps I've missed something.
- zrgiu 16y ago
  here you go: http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=138294 http://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/bin/answer.py?hl... don't believe the "we're working hard to add more..." bs at the bottom, that list has been the unchanged for a long while now.

danteembermage 16y ago

The marketplace is terrible for discovering new content. The absence of anything like "top selling new apps this week" means scrolling through pages and pages of the same old stuff.

robotron 16y ago
Yeah, discovering new content is really not very enjoyable.
scrrr 16y ago
Not to mention the inability to browse on a desktop browser. I'd like a feature where I surf on the web and select apps, and later that day I press a "Sync" button of sorts and get the apps.
- archivator 16y ago
  You just described appbrain.com Sure, it's not Google's baby but it's still a hell of a lot better than the Market. It's been my go-to place for new apps for a few months now.
  - pdaddyo 16y ago
    I still don't understand why Google haven't snapped up AppBrain and integrated with their market. It is the superior solution at the moment.

ebaysucks 16y ago

Funny how Google wants to implement a curator instead of the obvious solution: an Android app search engine. They tackle everything with algorithms, why not this problem?

scotu 16y ago
as far as I can tell from the quotes, no curator is going to implemented, it seams a simple speculation from appleinsider. I might be very wrong but to me seems like a statement that google is strengthening his efforts started with the market itself to kick out out-of-term-of-service apps. Not only malicious, see apps like kongragate, that was considered an alternative android market and so was pulled; it is no more in the market, this doesn't mean you cannot install it your way, legally and easily. The last two paragraphs are full of fud, BTW

zrgiu 16y ago

Maybe someone from google is reading this: PLEASE ALLOW THE REST OF THE F*ING WORLD TO SELL APPS.this is killing me here in Romania. I have 3 cool, good looking games (angry birds competitors), just sitting and waiting.

antihero 16y ago
That's one thing I've never got - the market has been out, what, years now and still they haven't bothered to sort out selling in other countries. What gives? Google is a giant multinational and even if there are legal issues, that's the reason they have a huge team of lawyers.
fierarul 16y ago
There is probably an opportunity cost because you aren't releasing the games as soon as possible. You might consider entering into some sort of deal with somebody that is able to publish your game or make an US (or whatever country is allowed) entity. Of course, this is much too complicated/expensive than it would be if Google would do their part. I'm also from Romania and this lack of support from Google is the reason I've only done iOS apps.
- zrgiu 16y ago
  i've explored that road actually, and it's not really possible. Besides having a US/UK/[other allowed country] account, they also require you to have an actual address in that country. There have been several developers who have been publishing paid apps for other people and they got their accounts banned.
  - thomasz 16y ago
    ever thought about a Ltd?
  - nextparadigms 16y ago
    Angry Birds is making $1 million a month from ads on Android. Have you tried ads?

apakatt 16y ago

So first it took over a year for us in Sweden to get paid apps. Then it turns out that there is some bug which prevents "google for my domain"-users from buying Android-apps. Google Checkout with the same account works on a regular computer but not on my phone even though all other features work. So I have to create yet another GMail address and associate my credit card with it just so I can buy apps which I've been to lazy to do. Result: I've bought apps on my iPod touch which I never use but not once single a Android app even though I've used Android since the launch of the first dev-phone (2008).

andybak 16y ago

Their recent fancy-pants redesign made everything prettier, slower, more cluttered and added almost no new functionality. One of the devs had the nerve to post about how clever the resolution-independent swoosh at the top was. In my head I was yelling "stop fiddling with that and fix the frikkin search!"

InclinedPlane 16y ago
Indeed, the app-store is very un-googly at the moment. Google made their name in search by providing the highest quality results, that's certainly not the case with the app-store.
- stretchwithme 16y ago
  their search results get more un-googly as time goes on as well.
- korl 16y ago
  Your comment is just repeating what OP said.
fluidcruft 16y ago
The one thing I like about the new market is that it recovers from install hangs much better. Often I get apps that download 100% and just sit there doing nothing (i.e. not moving into install phase). In the old market the only thing that would work was to cancel the the entire install and try again (i.e. re-download the app from scratch) until it worked. With the new market, leaving that app's page and coming back seems to deliver a reliable kick in the ass to the process when it's frozen. That alone is worth any annoyances. For everything else, there's appbrain.

cormullion 16y ago

OK for a beta release though

stretchwithme 16y ago

Google should give up and license others to run competing Android app stores. Then someone will figure how to do international app sales and curate Android apps.

db42 16y ago
Even if google will not, someone(read amazon) is trying pretty hard :) http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/amazon-android-app-store/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/09/27/amazon-android-app-stor...

mycroftiv 16y ago

I believe there is an essential factor which isn't being articulated; the different demographics and psychology of android phone purchasers vs. iphone purchasers. I think Apple attracts a large portion of the "eager to spend money on technology" customer base. If you are someone who is eager to spend a lot of time playing with your phone, you are likely to buy an iphone. If you want smartphone functionality but are not inclined to make a hobby of your phone use, you are likely to buy an android phone. I love my android phone, but I am simply not interested in spending additional money on applications, and no matter how good app store search and discovery is and no matter how painless payment is, I can't imagine any phone application I would be interested in purchasing.

arethuza 16y ago
I don't really recognize the "eager to spend money" category - I've bought a fair amount of apps for my iPhone and iPad (mostly games for the iPad at the prompting of my 12 year old son) - the main reason I end up buying stuff is because it is so easy to do and the prices are generally so low that they are almost literally "sweetie money".
thret 16y ago
These two were the clincher for me: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/google-translate-real-time/ http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/01/google-translate-real... http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rush-poker-mobile/details http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/rush-poker-mobile/details
pohl 16y ago
I think you're on to something, but I think "willingness to spend" might be more accurate than "eager to spend". I don't think it has anything to do with making a hobby out of phone use, either. Plenty of android users are eager to tweak & tinker & install & play around with their phones. They're just tight-fisted with their money, that's all. It seems to be a bit like linux users who — spoiled by the ability to freely download and install something that will do almost anything — wouldn't think to open their wallet to pay for software, no matter how good. Edit: iOS isn't immune to this kind of user, either. Just check out app reviews complaining about having to pay 1/5th what people would spend on coffee for an app. But the existence of tightwads isn't as bad a problem as an absence of paying customers. Android is like The Cheapskate Channel: all tightwads, all the time.

terhechte 16y ago

Soon on Daring Fireball: Short quote from that article and a "Uh Oh" :)

drtse4 16y ago

"Google also hopes to negotiate carrier billing agreements with scores of regional mobile providers, allowing users to buy apps and bill them to their mobile account." Hopes...? Implementing this (and extending the coverage of paied apps) will completely change the market. No need to signup for any additional service and to have a credit card (in Europe/rest of the world not as diffused as in the US). If their objective is really to increase the sales, this should be the most important thing to do and that needs more people working on, not updating the market site (although changes are needed).

warrenmiller 16y ago

but don't forget Google makes a lot of cash from advertising on free apps. They own Admob and Google Mobile Ads so have a good chunk of the Android advertising market. If an app gets purchased Google makes 30% of the sale, but with advertising they make between 15-35% for the lifetime of the app. Whats that worth? about a billion a year or so... http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7772.html http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/advertising/7772.html

markessien 16y ago

Google has this idea in its head that the world should be html and web based. It wants a big server infra-structure and almost non-existent clients, because it IS a big server infrastructure. Google wants to be the platform that everyone is building on top, and take away the thick clients. Now, unfortunately for them, things don't seem to be swinging that way. The chrome app store is a bust, chrome-os is not working and people by far prefer the native apple app store, and the native apple apps to the server based offerings. However, google seems to not be paying attention to that. For their business, it would make so much sense if everything were running "in the cloud". That's what they would love, because they have the scale and opportunity to own this market. So they cripple Android app-selling, such that people don't bet too heavily on 'owned' native apps. They are trying to buy time till cloud based apps become more prevalent - which frankly, is a really really long time from now.

orangecat 16y ago
Everything I've seen from Google is that they're agnostic on native vs web apps. They're happy as long as you're using Google services and looking at Google ads.

lordmatty 16y ago

I've a friend whose company released a decent quality branded App on the Market recently. It was backed by a good amount of advertising/marketing and was pitched at the correct demographic. The total number of paid week one sales? 68

orangecat 16y ago
Which comes out to 3500 per year. That's not bad, and is in the ballpark of the median iOS app.
- lordmatty 16y ago
  Thats week one with a big marketing push..we see at least that amount per day for our paid branded apps, and they have been around over a year and receive no marketing spend. I'm pretty sure the sales will drop off, like any iOS app.

jacquesm 16y ago

They've had their chance here, fancy Android phone, most frustrating experience with a phone since trying out a Samsung about three years ago (I hear they've since cleaned up their act). Absolutely terrible battery life, most frustrating user interface I've ever seen and a very rickety touch screen, next to impossible for me to type out a message with any speed (fat fingers I guess). I've passed it on to my s.o. who is pretty happy with it, I'm back to a very cheap nokia. Buying an Iphone is not an option because I don't want to support apple's mobile department as long as they're not going to drop their weird app-store terms. Never even got around to getting an android devkit before moving on.

andybak 16y ago
I think you meant to reply on that 'generic smart phone whinges' thread.

micubogdan 16y ago

A google search algorithm would use to make some cleaning.On the internet,the market is a free4all as well,but google search makes an order out of it.

mjangda 16y ago

I would gladly buy apps if I had space on my phone. Thanks to the crippling 512mb on my Nexus One I get to spend every 3rd day cleaning my phone (despite the fact that half my apps are already running off SD.)

nika 16y ago

One thing that Apple has that Google doesn't seem to have is an affiliate program. Affiliates get %5 of app sales (or other iTunes sales) by driving traffic to the store. This provides a funding mechanism to incentivize people to make discovery tools. I'm kinda impressed with the number of third party discovery tools for android, but I think that ecosystem would be more robust, and less of the burden on google, if they provided a monetization method for good app discovery. Apple just partnered with LinkShare and other providers of the service. Seems Google could do the same thing.

flawawa2 16y ago

I would happily buy some apps if I could pay anonymously (like with "cash").

gaiusparx 16y ago

Sounds like an excuse for their lame marketplace which paid apps are not available in many countries. They do not make it easy for developers of paid apps. Why are they not happy? They are cornering app developers into free app+ advertising model (eg AngryBirds) and they should be very happy with the fat AdMob dollars.

SoftwareMaven 16y ago

I'm surprised nobody is talking about Google moving to a curated model. I'm obviously comfortable with it, since I'm an iPhone owner; how do you Android people feel about it? That was supposed to be a major differentiator between the two marketplaces.

dminor 16y ago
They aren't moving to a curated model, just beefing up the team that enforces the Terms and Conditions. Probably overdue given the growth of the market.

bane 16y ago

All I want, and it's not too hard, is to separate free from paid apps, then apps from games, then be able to rank them by number of downloads or average rating. For search, AppBrain seems to have that pretty nailed down. (Actually the AppBrain app is miles better than the crappy one from Google).