What Android Developers Need to Know

imageJust a month ago, a topic with about the same name appeared on Habré and it was dedicated to novice programmers, chewing some features of development for this platform. Even then, I thought about writing this article, since it seemed that it was better to approach the beginning of work in a new environment on the other hand. Namely, with a more philosophical one. In order not to fill up cones, it is always better to use someone else's experience, which I share with you.

Last summer, completely unexpectedly for myself, I purchased a Nexus One smartphone. I was terribly pleased with my purchase and for a long time tinkering in its software filling, admiring the reasonableness of the system. Since I have been a game developer for a long time, I wanted to make something of my own for this device. After a fairly tight study of the platform, reading special literature, the first swallows appeared in the form of various screen decorations. It should be noted that despite the fact that I never seriously worked with java, the language seemed easy to learn and intuitive. Google documentation helped a lot. All this together inspired hopes for the successful development of the first serious project, the design of which has already begun to take shape from the first steps in the study of Android. Enthusiasm was added by the fact that after a trial putting the application with live wallpaper on the market for the first day it was downloaded by almost a thousand users. Thoughts about commercial projects and "easy profit" spun in my head.

It was a lyrical-optimistic preamble, and now we turn to reality.

Monetization of Android applications

Here, first of all, you need to touch the "owner" of the system, Google Corporation. The ideology of this company is sympathetic, since most of its projects are based on openness and free of charge. It seems fine, but ... And then we have to compare this company with another well-known one. Google’s competitor in the market for Apple’s mobile platforms meets its user with the first question: “And show me your credit card, dear. Thank you, now welcome! ”Than Google meets us:“ Come along soon, we have so much free! ”As a user, this cannot but rejoice. But what will the developers say when they see a client who is not used to paying? Serious developers, having localized one of their applications from another platform and summing up, will make an appropriate assessment and will work with those who pay. That is why the same applications flash on the main page of the Android Market for several months. And the market itself, with an almost complete absence of moderation, turned into a mountain of trash, to find something serious in it is an unrealistic task. Plus, you can easily pick up some muck with different options for the consequences.

But not everything is so gloomy. Since there are few serious companies in the market, individual developers occupy a free niche. And this is us. For a large company, a penny is enough for small developers to “bread and butter”. For example, the main buyers of my games, like most, are Americans. Following are the Germans and, surprisingly, the Russians. Yes, contrary to any speculation about "lovers of freebies" and "mentality." Although one event, which I will discuss below, the percentage of the domestic buyer decreased, nevertheless, I did not less respect for my honesty.

I will share a positive observation that may be useful to many novice developers. If you make paid games of basically one genre, then often buyers take your entire “kit”. Sometimes immediately, sometimes after testing one of the games.

Suppose you find the genre that you think should be profitable and decide to release a commercial program. Your development becomes popular even in such not very popular section "Paid applications". Of course, your application will be noticed ... and hacked. This you will feel immediately as soon as foreign students stop pestering with requests by mail how to download without a card. Of course, Google’s “protection” was installed with the beautiful name LVL, but breaking it is much easier than embedding it.

We type the name of the program on Google (oh my God, and he is with them!) And the first link leads to a hacked apk file. You can try to deal with the administrators of pirated sites, but you are not the first of the authors whose letters will be ignored. One of my games thus got on our domestic site w3bsit3-dns.com. It is naive to believe that if I ask you to remove the hacked file and a link to it from your pages, the administration will meet me. But it was not there! If the moderator sent me to the administrators to resolve the issue, then they just sent me. Silently. Turning to one, then to the other, having received ignore in response, I realized that this is a policy with respect to authors, and the list “... which is forbidden on the site is prohibited” has been compiled to avert eyes. The theme is still there and active.

If you do not like this state of affairs, then there is a way out - free applications with advertising. I will not disclose this topic, as it has been repeatedly described. Personally, I use AdMob, although the money for 500 thousand ad impressions per day from one application is very moderate. Perhaps one and the same unattractive advertisement is spinning, so users do not want to leave the screen with the game, clicking on the banner. In most cases, the profit from a free Android application with integrated advertising is much higher than from a paid one. Although it is always worth considering the specifics and genre of your program.

Application Promotion

So you published your creation and the question arose about its promotion. I admit honestly, no one directly addressed me with a proposal to promote games. But according to other developers, this kind of activity is flourishing on a grand scale. Just look at the top ten different categories and be discouraged by the programs presented there. Some of them are not even properly designed, but the number of downloads is amazing. Many of them may simply not start, but if we look at the reviews, we will see numerous delights there, with alternating curses from those who were seduced. Such enthusiasm, drawn up “carbon copy”, can be read in Russian, which speaks of the support of different localization developers. What is there to hide, the Apple appstore also sins with this.

System weaknesses and glitches

The main problem of the Android market, like any Google service: if you suddenly have a problem and you yourself will not find a way out of it, no one will help you. Your letters will be answered by robots with a link to the FAQ and the forum. The help forum is a feature of the corporation "saving the drowning - the work of the drowning themselves." If a miracle happens and a Google employee appears in the subject, do not wait for a constructive answer.

But when buyers will have problems with the market, then irritated letters will rush to the developer, as the only living character in the process of acquiring the program. One of my suggestions was out of luck when it was published on the eve of system failures. Buyers could not download the already paid application and out of spite ruined me the rating, which later with difficulty somehow climbed out by 3+.

Perhaps the most common problem is an invalid card (expired, no money, etc.). Such attempts are made to pay up to half of the total number of sales, and they are marked with a red warning that the buyer was allegedly notified of the invalidity of the transaction. I don’t know how he was notified, but judging by the constant attempts to repeat the purchase many times, this is done bluntly say “not obvious”. After such unsuccessful actions, the buyer puts you a low rating and writes a letter of despair "the game does not start." All this affects the overall impression of the market. And it would seem that prevents Google from solving this problem. Perhaps he is trying to solve it, but in a strange way: since the beginning of the year, paid applications have been downloaded for a very long time, discouraging the desire to get involved with paid programs at all.

Fragmentation

Last fall, a series of articles appeared that Android fragmentation is a myth. Most likely they were designed for those developers who are considering moving to the platform. But only after a close acquaintance, you understand that this is not a myth, but the curse of Android. It would seem that ask friends a couple of smartphones from different manufacturers, test, and you will be sure of the success of your application. There it was. It turns out the phones of one manufacturer can be completely "dissimilar." In this regard, the vaunted Samsung succeeds, having a unique combination of excellent hardware and completely buggy software. To software I also include firmware for these phones, which seems to be going by different companies.

Let's say you have three phones Samsung Galaxy x, Samsung Galaxy xx, Samsung Galaxy xxx. You are testing the game - on x and on xx, everything is going fine, but it does not start on xxx. By long attempts, find out the reason. For example, xxx does not like the sound compression format (strange, but it happens, apparently it freezes at the moment of decompression when there is not enough memory). We change the compression, the game started to run on xxx, but stopped working on xx. Finally, you are friends of all three phones with your game and with a good conscience publish it. From time to time you will receive reviews that the game does not start on one of the above phones. But since these are isolated cases and you are not able to control the problems of phones of specific users, we ignore messages. And here comes the new firmware. Users are first happy and then they discover that a number of applications either stopped running or do not work correctly. In my case, it turned out to be that “perfect” x, on which everything was excellent from the very beginning. Most developers simply make exceptions in the market for such phones, but this is not an option.

Some conclusions

In my opinion, the main problem of Android is Google. Although I, like many, feel sympathy for this corporation (I repeat), but what it does (or rather does not) with my brainchild leads to sad thoughts.

Google reminds me of the island of socialism in the business world. A certain model of the USSR with flights into space, Olympic champions and other victories. The oil for Google is advertising. The profit received, aimed at the purchase of new projects, is lost nowhere. Because no one is responsible for anything for them. It would seem that Android should bring good profits to the corporation (feeding the developers just as well). But do they need these "pennies" in comparison with the cash flows from advertising? Most likely, another owner, for whom the market would determine a serious share in profits, would change this state of affairs, put things in order in software and tightened the certification of devices. And everyone would win.

And for a developer on the road to choosing a mobile application development system, I would recommend where it has already been debugged.

Topic does not claim to be the ultimate truth. This is just my purely personal impression. Success story can be found everywhere, even on a hub Here's a slightly different vision of Android as a whole.

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