Monday, December 10, 2012

A Developer's Opinion of Different Mobile App Stores

Google Play Store Logo


I wanted to blog about this long ago. Thankfully I have the experience of managing different accounts on different mobile app stores including Apple's App Store, Google Play, Ovi Store and some operator stores that are not worth mentioning :)

Every store of these has positives and negatives from developer/publisher/business points of view.


Apple's App Store

Positives:

  • Clean and responsive publisher control panel
  • Sharing features embedded in the store, you can share app link to social networks
  • Ability to check reviews, crash reports, modify description and price from a single place.
  • In a country like Egypt you, as a publisher, don't have a problem with publishing paid apps at all.

Negatives:

  • The review process takes long time.
  • Developer dosen't have full control on app release time and update time. Apple review may take longer than what you planned for and this is costly.
  • No availability of communication channel between publisher and reviewers, not able to reply for bad reviews for example.
  • The reporting system needs to be more effective cause monthly reports get deleted and If you wanted to know the total amount of sales your app made since you launched the app, you're gonna have a hard time on the control panel.
  • No operator billing is available, at least in Egypt.

Google Play

Positives:

  • Clean developer console interface with good analytics look.
  • You can upload the app and deliver it to users within an hour, that's AMAZING. No sluggish review process and developer has more control on when to release an app.
  • There are ways to do some google play store search engine optimization and it works. I've tried some of these ways, It takes some time but works at the end.
  • The download numbers insights on the store encourages people to download you app If it's doning well.
  • Google recently allowed top publishers to reply to customer reviews, Yay! It's a great feature although it's hard to be a "Top Developer" :)

Negatives:

  • As a publisher from Egypt and some other countries, You are not allowed to publish paid apps till now. That's really annoying.
  • No operator billing is available, at least in Egypt.

Nokia (Previously Ovi) Store

Positives:

  • Allows paid apps downloads and publishing in Egypt.
  • Operator Billing is enabled with more than one operator.

Negatives:

You know, this list can be too damn long! .. but anyway I'll point to the most annoying ones
  • The publisher control panel is very old-style.
  • The mobile store client doesn't allow sharing, I've emailed Nokia store team more than one time about this problem. This feature is gonna make them and the developers tons of money but they don't care!!!!
  • The review process is stupid, your app can be rejected for a reason that could be detected while pressing submit instead of waiting days to know and fix the trivial problem.
  • You don't have access to user reviews.
  • The analytics section is delayed 2 days :s .. and the section doesn't provide much info.
  • The billing matrix is weird, getting 10 downloads from india = 1 download from poland :s
  • That's enough, I've some other work to do. It's almost infinite list :D

What about you?

Can you tell me your experience with theses stores and other ones ? .. I'm interested to know about Windows Phone Marketplace too.

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