It’s only been a few short weeks since Google first announced this new licensing technology, and it has already been broken. Android Police has already cracked the new licensing technology. Not only did they crack it, they also made it clear that the process was fairly simple, going so far as to suggest that the crack could be packaged into an application that would be able to break the licensing protection on every program on the phone with ease.

This is great news for anyone looking to get some paid applications for free, but it’s not good news for the Android community as a whole. Piracy is one of the reasons that applications just don’t sell as well on the Android Market as they do on Apple’s App Store. Android users have yet to see programs from major software publishers due to the lack of security inherent to the Android Market. Until Google can come up with a copy protection scheme that actually works, it’s unlikely that we’ll see any of those big developers and publishers bringing their applications and games to Android phones.

Google now finds itself in a sticky situation. The new licensing service turned out to be underwhelming, and they pushed it out the door with full confidence that it would help ease concerns over piracy. To have the service cracked wide open in such a short amount of time makes them look ill-equipped to protect the developers who want to sell their products on the Market. Despite Android’s ever increasing adoption rate, Google may find themselves in hot water if they can’t come up with a firm solution to the piracy problem. If developers don’t bring new quality products to the platform, Google will have a hard time keeping users interested.

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Android Market Changes

57% of Android Applications are Free

Google App Inventor for Android

Android Market vs AppStore

Google seems to be very keen to make Android the most popular mobile operating system. Few days ago the company announced new revolutionary service, which allows all users to easily create applications for their phones. Basically users will not require any programming skills or knowledge to create an application, and anybody will be able to do it.  This service is called Google App Inventor and is available for users to register their interest. The official website says that users will be given access to the service in the coming weeks. Users will be able to create and download applications to their phones, but not to other Android users at this stage.

In the application’s main window you see building blocks, which are used to create applications. You will get access to various settings, access to all phone functions, such as SMS messaging, Twitter, motion sensor, etc. Basically we are getting a powerful tool to freely express our individuality. After playing with the App Inventor for a whole evening, I can say that this application can and will change our perception about writing applications as a whole. Google is giving  a very powerful tool to non-programmers, and I am sure that many of them will use it to show off their creative potential.

No other company on the market offers such a tool to its users and they are not even close to be able to offer such functionality. I strongly recommend you to try this application – it is a revolution, which should not be underestimated. Latest figures show that Android Market has around 70 000 applications, and that the next milestone barrier of 100 000 applications will be reached in the near future. I will not even try  to guess the number of applications that will flood the market, when the App Inventor goes out of the beta stage. It will be stunning. For the first time the company turned not to the developers, but to all users, and provided a tool for creating programs for their phones. This is a truly amasing offering. Below is a video, which explains the process of creating a simple ‘meow-meow’ application. Personally, I am delighted of the number of opportunities that App Inventor opens for Android.

Distimo is a company that specializes on mobile application market analysis for different platforms. They have recently released interesting statistics on the proportion of free vs. paid applications for the Android Market, AppStore, OVI Store and others. They have also listed top 10 most popular free and paid applications for Android. The results are quite interesting, and in the case of our beloved “Market” entertaining.

First let’s look at the free vs. paid application comparison chart.

It is easy to notice in the above chart that the percentage of free programs on the Android Market is higher than on any other mobile platform – 57%. By the way, not so long ago this value was closer to 50%, so it slightly increased over time. This statistics has its positive and negative aspects. The good news is that free software for Android is thriving. Bad news – the quality of most programs is far from being “good”, many applications just copy each other.

Two interesting tables below are showing us the most popular programs for Android. As you can see, Google Maps and Pandora Radio are the most popular free apps, while Beautiful Widgets is the top paid application.

[via Distimo]

[Android Market image via resnickscity.wordpress.com]

Although the online version of the Android Market, is still inconvenient and almost useless, Google made one small, but important improvement – category selection. This is a small step in the right direction, and, hopefully, one day Market will become similar to the AppStore and provide users with advanced features.

When you open the Market web page, you will not only see three tabs with the featured,  top free and top paid applications, but will now also be able to view categories. Categories are only available in top free and top paid tabs. When selecting a category, you will be presented with the best applications from this category in the left pane. Once you select an application you are interested in, its description and screen shots will be shown in the right pane. Quite simple and elegant solution.

I’m hoping that Google will make few more improvements to the website before the Google I/O conference.

The other day I had to sign up for a new podcast. I usually do it through Apple iTunes as I am familiar with the interface and site design (as any other iPod or iPhone user). In order to subscribe, I opened the Store tab and searched for the required podcast. While I was doing all this, I saw a link to the AppStore. And I started to subconsciously compare Apple’s AppStore to the Android Market. I realised how easy-to-use and consistent AppStore is – it doesn’t matter whether you access it from your iPhone or notebook computer – user experience stays the same. Android’s web store, on the other hand, is average at best. Why is that?

I understand that when Apple released iPhone, they already had a powerful tool like iTunes to take advantage of. And all they had to do was to build an interface for purchasing and downloading applications to iPhones and Touches. On the other hand, interfaces of mobile versions of both Market and AppStore (those that are loaded on the devices themselves) are very similar in functionality and design, and even in structure and logic. The mobile version of the Market is clean and user-friendly, and goes on par with the AppStore. But the Web version – it is something very ordinary.

There are no categories in the Android Market (except for a general list for paid programs); there is no search function… Generally speaking there is nothing there except for a few hundred applications (out of thousands that exist for Android), that are divided into two groups: free and paid programs. Moreover, the only thing you can really do in this version of the Market is to go to the developer’s website, and read a short description and view pictures. No user ratings or comments from the mobile version of the Market are available here.

The question is – why maintain this version of the Market. Looking at the state of the site it is clear that Google is not interested in it. Android device manufacturers and application developers don’t show much interest either. In my opinion there are three options for the Market:

1. In the next 6-12 months Google will decide to improve and promote this version of the Market. It will get associated with the mobile version, or just re-developed to include all the software, rankings and much more.

2. Google will give a clear message to its partners that the company is not interested in this version of the Market and no further improvements will be done to the site. In this case an odd situation can occur, when some manufacturers or developers may decide to create their own versions of the Market and integrate these versions with the mobile devices instead of the standard Market application. Companies that already developed Market counterparts will have a good chance to dominate this niche.

3. The current version of the Market will be removed completely and users will have two options – use the mobile version of the Market or use alternative application sites. You might want to check androlib.com – it is a good alternative to the official Android Market.

Hopefully the situation will improve and users will have two fully featured versions.

What do you think?

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