Android piracy major problem, hurts devs

A new report from the Yankee Group says that Android piracy is a major problem, Google isn’t doing enough to help police it and that this is having a material impact on developers’ bottom line.

“Android apps are living in the Wild West without a sheriff,” said Carl Howe, Yankee Group director of research and author of the report “Android Piracy: How Republished Apps Steal Revenue and Increase Costs,” in a prepared statement. “With five other major mobile OSs competing for consumer dollars, Google can’t afford to simply let pirates kill app developers’ businesses. They need to foster some law and order or developers will flee to other platforms and Android will lose customers.”

I’m not going to go crazy about this yet because it seems some of the findings may be a bit flawed, as it’s based on a Skyhook survey that only had 75 respondents. While some Android developers said that piracy has cost them up to $10,000, it’s unclear if that’s representative of the developer ecosystem as a whole.

But I do speak to many developers on a daily basis and I use Android phones alongside my iPhone 4 and it’s easy to see that money is still primarily with iOS in the app space. Many companies that are going mobile will still go iOS first, then Android and there’s because there has been a clear ROI and Apple has paid out billions to developers.

That’s not to say that Android development isn’t worth the time and effort, as Google has done a much better job in giving app makers better tools and the redesigned Android Market should help with content discovery. Still, it is insanely easy to pirate Android apps, so you just have to hope that Google, handset makers and carriers make the experience good enough to keep people off the torrent sites.

[Via Yankee Group]

About The Author

Marin Perez

Marin Perez has torture tested cell phones and smartphones for industry leaders like CNET and InformationWeek. He remembers when 4G was just a screen on PowerPoint presentations and is fascinated with the amount of innovation out there. Marin has spent a lot of time with BlackBerry and Android but he finally broke down a bought an iPhone to see what all the hype's about. He also has too many tablets.

Rikkirik

Android is crap. Android is not a unique technology, but is an agregation of technology form rivals, which makes it vurnerable to patent infringement lawsuits from rivals (MS, Apple and Oracle) Android is not secure, but open and flawed, exposed to malware, bad quality apps and piracy. Android is fragmented which does not make it an integrated eco-system, updates are not on a regular basis and cannot be applied to all Android phones at once. Why do anybody buy those phones I do not know. But I think it’s because Apple and Blackberry are niche products, and if you want anything else, at this moment there is only Android, which is a mass and a cheap product. Most Android partners have never made a profit selling Android phones. It’s a good thing that Microsoft WP7 is just around the corner. Of all the Operating Systems, Android has the most to lose with W7 phones on the market. It won’t suprise me that MS WP7 will take marketshare especially from Android devices.
Geertruida

If Android was worth anything, Google would not have given it away for free (it’s so cheap it’s free), but would have licensed it to vendors.
Anonymous

I don’t agree
Hammams

The problem with android apps is most of them are unstable and you only have 15 minutes to try the app, which is not enough. I admit to pirating apps, but I also buy them if they are worth it. I try them for a few hours and see if they are stable. Most of the time though, they crash my phone, are full of bugs or force close often. There isn’t an entity that does an initial evaluation of your app like Apple does yet google still takes 30% cut.

Bottom line: most apps aren’t worth buying on Android and the very few that are, are being bought.
http://www.dancingdorid.com Terry

Rikkirik,

TCP/IP, HTTP, Apache, Sendmail, Perl, Ruby on Rails, WordPress, and the list goes on …

are all free. They seem to be worth something as it is the basis for the Internet.

Terry
http://www.dancingdroid.com Terry

Rikkirik,

TCP/IP, HTTP, Apache, Sendmail, Perl, Ruby on Rails, WordPress, and the list goes on …

are all free. They seem to be worth something as they are the basis for the Internet and the World Wide Web.

Terry