[Android Apps and Games] rbtconsultants:
Hi - thanks for supporting Tune Pop!

The licensing thing is a pain in the ass. It is due to how the Android Licensing works. What happens is that the app does an Android license check, and the Android License checker makes a determination whether it needs to check with the market to see if you have a license. It decides this based on how long since it last checked. When it gets a response from the market, it caches the response for use until enough time passes until it thinks it needs to check again.

When this happens, it happens asynchronously, so the app continues and doesn't wait for the license response. When the license response is cached it happens fast enough so that it doesn't matter, but when the License check goes to the market to check it sometimes takes too long and the app doesn't think it is licensed until it checks again and gets the cached response. Trying to implement work-arounds to this potentially expose our apps to being hacked easier. I know that a 99 cent app doesn't require as robust licensing as we have implemented, but the real goal was designing an architecture we could use a secure licensing model for any apps we might develop.

Actually the whole license thing is a pain in the ass that resulted in there being a Tune Pop and a Tune Pop Pro.

Now that the market is going to allow In-App purchases we are re-architecting our apps to use that, so there will only be one app, and it will allow purchase/upgrade in-app. So, this will resolve both issues since we will only have one app (eliminating separate free and pro apps) and the license check will work better.

This will become available when Android Market releases in-app purchases publicly. Code is being developed now based on the pre-release documentation. We're doing some figuring on how we will accommodate existing Tune Pop Pro users in that new model, and we will accommodate them.

We have hit a dead-end with the Samsung player for now, but we're hoping that Samsung will make source code available and we will be able to do something with that, but all we can really do is wait and hope at this point.

We really appreciate your purchasing Tune Pop Pro.

Frankly, I'm very discouraged with the Android Market right now. Almost 10,000 people have downloaded Tune Pop and only about 100 have actually bought it. That makes the hourly wage for developing it about 50 cents an hour. More frustrating was a lot of that was creating a licensing architecture we are now tossing out for a new one.

Hopefully, in-app purchasing will encourage more people to make purchases on the Android Market, but it really appears that people on Android want everything for free. I was really hoping to establish a real business doing quality niche app development for Android but damn, the market is a harsh environment. The purchasing, licensing and rating system and the general user perception of how things work make it a tough ecosystem, and I wonder how many development businesses beyond the carriers and Google are making any real profit from this. Especially for apps like Tune Pop that can't really do anything with Ads.

I am basically an Android fanboy and will always have Android for my personal devices, but I am being forced to consider whether my development time might be better spent on WP7 or IPHONE, where app purchasing has a much higher acceptance rate according to research I have been reading. I have a few more Android apps in the pipeline and will wait to release them until there is in-app purchasing and see how that goes, and assess things more at that time.

Again, thanks for supporting us and we will continue to work to support you.

Bob