Android Market vs. other markets?

Java on Mobile Devices Android
#1

I have my games published in the Android Market where things go pretty well. I also published one application in Handango mainly to give people a chance to buy the game in countries where paid apps are not available in the Android Market. Handango sales are pretty low. Also, the developer interface is a joke.

I get an email to publish in other 3rd party markets every other week but haven’t done anything about that yet. Is it worth the time? If yes, what’s a good place to publish applications in addition to the Android Market?

Also, did anyone try to port their apps to J2ME/Symbian? If yes, how do downloads compare?

#2

The only other place I’ve published the game so far is SlideME, and only because I was asked to do so by someone on a forum. Downloads there are not bad though - about 10% compared of the numbers I see on the Market. Don’t know how those numbers would be for a for-pay application though; since us non-privileged can’t sell games on the Market and the copy protection in Android is a joke, I haven’t had much interest in trying this out.

#3

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but if you have a rooted phone, you can get around the copy protection, however, if you don’t, you can’t. So it stops people buying the game, backing it up, returning it (getting a refund), and then restoring the game from the backup.

Anyway, I haven’t tried any of the other markets, simply because, AFAIK, they don’t offer copy protection. Although, maybe they don’t offer refunds as well (which would be a good thing)?

#4

How about porting an application to non-Android stores, e.g. Ovi? Any idea how downloads compare?

#5

When I first started publishing Android apps last year, I tried to publish in as many 3rd-party markets as I could find. I was also approached by resellers in Japan and India. So far I haven’t seen a dime from any of these sources (sales are either non-existent or so low that I can’t meet the payout threshold). Besides, it’s time-consuming to submit to other portals because they all have different requirements and standards. You can spend a significant amount of time creating or resizing icons and screenshots, rewriting descriptions, and going through 7 pages of choices just to upload a single app (and I’ve got tons of apps).

In the end it just isn’t worth my while, so I stick with the Android Market, though which I’m doing pretty well.

If you have a single, high-demand app, it might be worth your while to distribute it through 3rd-party markets, or if you have a niche game, like an adult game, you’d probably want to distribute through MiKandi (although I’m not impressed with their implementation to date).

I’d love to see 3rd-party markets take off, but for paid apps they’ve been a bust for me. I’d like to hear accounts of more experiences, though.

#6

I’m on the exact same situation as you .
Since I can’t upload paid applications, and all my “revenue” comes from ads, I just upload them to slideme.org apart from Android Market .
The download rates are roughly the same as you stated : 10% of the Android market .

I recently got an e mail from appslib.com (which is a market directed to their device , the Archos 5) “inviting” me to post my apps there, and I gave it a shot . I got 5% of the Android Market downloads, but as polyclef noted, I don’t know if it’s worth the time . I spent like 4 hours changing my code to adapt it to their device, and I still have to create a different AndroidManifest for them, because of some dpi issues .

I think my case and strategy’s case is worth to post it on SlideMe.org . As for polyclef who already has some successfull apps, and also can post paid apps, I dont think it’s worth the time, since you will NOT get 10% of the hundreds of thousands of downloads you have in the Market .

Anyway, apart from SlideME.org, I don’t know any other market worth the effort to upload my games .