Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Subscription-based pricing apps in Handango Android market !?

I was surprised when finding this about the first unofficial Android market by Handango, who is already there online since October 2008 offering free and paid apps, even offering monthly/quarterly/yearly subsription-based pricing apps! It is very late to find about this though. 

I was then looking for some others references talking about this, some news reported #1 #2 
From those sources, however, Handango tends to rips off the user as well as the developers. Handango takes about 50% of the revenue, 25% to developers, another 25% either to developer or third business parter of Handango (if the apps are downloaded from such third party website. 

One thing that I am still curious is how Google reacted to such unofficial Android market. However I have not found any source talks about it in the internet. Google could lose some potential  revenues due to the competition from Handango. On another hand, I am also thinking maybe for a short term Google wants to see and use it as a marketing tool for the Android, until sometime when the official Android Market with paid and perhaps subscription-based pricing shows up how it goes.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting!

    Even if such market(s) exists.. the incentive that developers get in android market i.e. the 70% cut will make them more loyal to Android market.

    Secondly, if anyone wants to buy an android app android market would be the first place they will want to check out.

    Lets say if there is a market place where users can buy an app for a little cheaper price(than Android market which hasn`t started selling any apps yet) and the developer gets 70% as well (of the sale)... it might be interesting to see what happens then...

    Where will the users go ?? For developers... the bigger the customer base, sales and their share of the revenues.. they will be happy with any marketplace (not just Android or handango)

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