Android market 24 hrs "free use"
I’ve been experimenting with the Android Market on a variety of phonesover the last few weeks. In particular I’ve downloaded and used several travel apps – flight trackers, city guides etc.
In almost every case, I have taken advantage of Google’s policy of allowing full refund for apps returned within 24hrs to get my money back after using the app – because I’d probably got what I wanted out of the app in the first hour.
Having thought more about this, I realise that I feel a bit uneasy about what I did. First because of how I “gamed the system” to get value for nothing. But second because the App developers had no protection from what I was doing.
To appear in the Android Market, and help it become more successful, a developer has to allow 24hr “free use” – which seems a bit excessive to me.
Unlike with the iPhone, there is no requirement that Android apps be acquired from Android Market. Android apps may be obtained from any source including a developer’s own website. The good news therefore is that if developers want to adopt a different policy – for example in-app Freemium models, pay before you can use, and other payment models they are free to do so.
It will be interesting to see whether Android market drops its 24hrs free use model, or if vendors simply use it as a distribution platform – like GetJar, and take control of their own customer care and refund policies.
You can find out more about in-app payment models in our recently published white paper: “How to make money from mobile apps”.
