Market and Checkout are hurting us say developers
Looks like the people over at Skyhook Wireless have been busy. 
Not content with just focusing on making android apps location aware,-they have been running a survey on whether developers are making money on Android over the past few months.
They were kind enough to release a detailed report on their findings which has confirmed the sentiment that Android developers are not happy with the platform.
The fundamental causes of this are down to :
- low download volumes
- poor marketplace design and discovery
- lack of an effective consumer billing system. (aka developers hating google checkout)
- Platform fragmentation( ie multiple versions of android running concurrently)
Personally what I find most interesting about the report is the volume of downloads. Most of the developers surveyed had been downloaded only 10,000 times which considering the number of handsets sold is a staggeringly poor amount. The other key highlight is that 6 months after release the number of new downloads has virtually evaporated.
This report only covered 30 developers however having spoken to a lot of developers, and watched a lot of the twitter posts on #android, I can see these same sentiments echoed and I think that Skyhook have hit the nail on the head.
So what can be done? In order to grow the android platform, its important to have quality there. The only way that we are are going to see quality apps is if developers can make a reasonable return.
I would urge Google to continue to improve the market ( Android 1.6 was a good start) and focus on allowing other ways to allow people to pay for apps. ( Paypal integration would be a quick easy fix ?)
On the counterside of the argument- developers shouldn’t be frightened to use blogs, twitter and forums to market their products. It would be great to have an app go on the market and job done, however its important to realise that building a killer product is only the first step: User testing, Marketing, press releases are all going to become developers best friends in the next few years. The marketplace is getting crowded and developers need to learn to shout louder to get attention.
Take a look at the report below, and feel free to email or comment back to let me know what you think. If any developers or readers want to shout about their application to me, I would love to listen – feel free to contact me by clicking the link above!
View the Skyhook Developer Report via Skyhook Wireless
Related posts:
I totally agree with your arguement.
As an end user, two things frustrate me about the Android Market:
1) As with the developers, I am sick of dealing with Google Checkout. Other payment options (i.e. carrier billing, PayPal, linking Google Checkout to a confirmed checking or savings account) need to be available. When I want to buy an app on the Market, I run a 50-50 chance that my debit card provider will decline the purchase – which hoses me half the time I want to buy an app.
2) There needs to be a way for end users to cut the S/N ratio in the Android Market app – it would be nice for individual end users to be able to block from search results specific authors whose apps are consistently useless; maybe this can be used as feedback for the authors and those who run the Market.
I certainly don’t want an almost draconian system of app approval to be in place for Android – on a daily basis I hear horror stories of how Apple makes developers for iPhone jump through multiple hoops for approval of apps – and hear almost on a daily basis of seemingly arbitrary decisions on potential apps getting nixed there. But there needs to be a better way for those who use the Android Market to winnow away the noise and get to apps that are useful and add value to their devices.