Upload app to Android Market: Criticisms and impressions

Hi Everyone!!!!

Previously, I told I uploaded my first Android app, PvP, to Android Market. One month later, my app has been downloaded by more than 500 people. I’m very happy with this one because I only wanted to learn and start in this world (I thought my app wouldn’t get more than 100 downloads in one year). Now, I’m going to tell you how to upload your app to Android Market.

 Firstly, before uploading your app, you have to check your app ;) and later and very important, you have to sign your app. You can see how to sign your app in previous post Signing your app.

When you have your app (or apk) ready, you have to join to Android Markey as a developer. This step is very easy, you must enter in Android Market for developer, write your gmail and write some personal data. It’s necessary to pay 25$ (about 20euros) to be able to upload app in Android, though when you pay this one, you won’t have to pay more money anymore. I don’t know if this one is expensive for somebody, but think you must pay 99$ to upload apps to Iphone, with this data I think 25$ isn’t expensive.

When you pay this money, you will be able to upload the app. It’s very easy to upload the app, because, you will have to upload your apk file, some images of the logotype and some screenshots of your app (this step is very boring because the images must have several dimensions) and finally you will write a description of your app in some languages.

When you finish these steps and you accept the Google conditions, your app will be in the Android Market!!!!

The speed and ease to upload the app are two pluses that I liked a lot, but there are things I didn’t like anything:

The number of downloads is updated once a day, I think updating once a week isn’t enough. In my case, this isn’t a problem, but if my app had thousands or millions of downloading, I would like the number of downloads were updated more often. Moreover, several occasions, Google has problems and they can’t update this number in three or four weeks!!!

You won’t have real statistics about who download your app until you spend a few days since you uploaded the app. When you have these statistics, a versions list, a mobile list, a countries list and a language list will appear in it. Again, theses statistics are updated once a day and the graphics and the information that appear are very poor (they should improve these things). In this web https://www.google.com/support/androidmarket/developer/bin/answer.py?hl=es&answer=139628 said, “We are working to add new information to your apps”. I hope this will be true, because I think they haven’t worked a lot in this section.

See you!!!