Paid apps coming to Android next week!

by at 4:39 pm February 13, 2009

android-storm

If you are a consumer…the title makes you cringe slightly as no one likes to part with their hard earned cheese.  If you’re a developer all you can see is big fat dollar signs in your eyes.  For the developers, a whole range of possibilities will now come with economic rewards…apparently, people aren’t afraid to buy apps, and lots of them as Apple’s App Store has already proven.  Next week it becomes Android’s turn.  Until now, all of the Marketplace apps were required to be free by Google.  Not a bad thing by any means, however it probably hampered developers in the sense that the more “serious” developers held out developing the downright jaw dropping apps until money started flowing in because it’s what they do for a living.  People can’t work for free ya know!  The US and UK are first up on the list of countries that will have access to the paid apps in the Marketplace with Germany,Austria, Netherlands, France, and Spain will join the party a little later in March.  So Androiders, are ya excited yet?

 
Source: Mobile Burn, Android Authority, All Shadow *pic*

   
  • http://www.froogloid.com Froogloid

    As the owner of mobile application development business I certainly agree with fee based downloads. As a consumer of mobile applications I also agree with fee based downloads and the reason is simple…. the old saying, you get what you pay for holds very true! If you’re getting an application for free usually it’s for 1 of 3 reasons ~ 1) the application is a beta and needs user feedback 2) the owner of the application has access to your user data which can prove to be quite lucrative 3) the application is 1 dimensional and thus didn’t take very long to develop and more than likely the developer of the application is a hobby developer. Just my 2 cents Btw, we’re releasing our first application next week called a2b. You can read about it here: http://froogloid.wordpress.com/blog/

    • Gadget God

      I can certainly understand where you’re coming from. I used to make Blackberry themes…(I know, quite different from actual applications but it’s relevant). Before I started making themes I was always looking for the free themes and would get frustrated when I couldn’t find them. However, when I started making my own and actually realized how much time it took (many times 50-60hrs+) to make themes. Making an individual theme could easily take 3,4,5+ days for a single model after you factor in everything that goes into a theme. Then if you plan on supporting other models you have to re-make everything. You could easily spend several weeks on one theme. Once I did that I realized the value of pay themes and way they do it and also realized that the pay themes were more often of much greater quality. Much the same with applications. Yes, free is nice, but the greatest things in life aren’t free.