Android Paid Applications

It’s a slick process. You sign into your Google account, venture into the Android Marketplace and find the application that suits your needs. Hit the “buy” button and voila, you have your new app. When signed into your Google account you’re automatically signed into your associated Google Checkout account, making purchases completely seamless.

Independent game and app developers often step in at the 99 cent price – even well known developers often sell their products for less than $3. Thinking back a year or two to my Bell Mobility experience, when using their marketplace, I couldn’t even find demos for 99 cents. The average game was $5 and ringtones were usually $1-$3. I was a victim until I found some websites with loads of free content – $5 data package and I could download all the content I wanted.

None the less, it’s an interesting evolution. Mobile phones and their carriers begin to support the Internet and the carriers try to cash in big. The unrealistic prices open the flood gates for more creative approaches which lower price and make more content available. What everyone seems to forget is that 1-3 year period where data cost $50/mb to prevent you from downloading your own content via the web. Your only option was to use the built in services with ridiculous per download prices.

As web ready phones become more popular and network speeds increase, eventually these games and apps will just be monetized by in-game/in-application advertising. It has already been around for a while, and is surely going to take a chunk out of paid downloads as the web experience improves on the average mobile phone.