Which are the Relevant Application Stores for Android? (Android)
The number of application stores for Android is steadily growing. For instance, a few days ago Amazon opened its application store for developers. Another example is appoke. Appoke just went into a public beta offering a social application store. These application stores are available in addition to the already existing ones. Appstores.info already lists about 20 application stores for Android and the new ones are not counted yet.

For an application publisher (e.g., developer or marketing agency) the question arises which are the relevant application stores for Android that should be supported. With support I mean upload of the application, upload of updates of the application, manage the payment procedure, collect and analyze download and active installation numbers, and react to user reviews and feedback. The time needed to provide such support is linear with number of application stores. As time is money application publishers want to focus on the relevant application stores that offer the most benefit.

I asked myself which are the relevant application stores. Given the list of application stores from appstores.info and the application stores I added by myself (e.g., appoke and andspot) I tried to upload MobileKnox to each of these application stores. Unfortunately, I was not able to upload MobileKnox to all of these application stores as some of them require weird information. For instance, the M1 Appstore requires a copy of my passport and a copy of my company registration valid in Singapore. As I do not want to send around copies of my passport to strangers I skipped this application store. In the end eleven application stores remained:
The dominate metric for success of an application is the number of downloads. Only if a user downloads the app there is a chance that she will use the application in the future. Compared to the number of active installations - which in fact is the better metric to measure the success of an application - the number of downloads is always publicly displayed in application stores. Hence, I will stick with this measure to compute the list of relevant application stores. For the last two weeks I counted the number of downloads for MobileKnox for each the above mentioned application stores. The list is structured by the number of downloads:

More than 100 downloads:
  • Android Market
  • AndroidPit
  • Handster
  • AndAppStore
  • SlideME
Less than 100 downloads but more than 10 downloads:
  • GetJar
Less than 10 downloads but more than 1 download:
  • AppsLib
  • Camangi
0 downloads:
  • Appoke
  • AndSpot
  • Amazon AppStore

From the list you see that only five out of the eleven application stores are of relevance. As expected the Android Market shows the highest download numbers. Following is the AndroidPit application store and with a gap the application stores from Handster, AndAppStore, and SlideME. The last mentioned three application stores show nearly the same download numbers. Interesting to see is that GetJar, AppsLib and Camangi show only between 100 and 1 downloads. The group with no downloads consists mainly of application stores that are not open to users or which just opened.

So, in the future I will focus on Android Market, AndroidPit, Handster, AndAppStore, and SlideME application stores. However, as the newly available application stores might gain power I will do such a relevance check every few month.

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 15:17 2011-01-23 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

How to Manage Paid Applications in the Various Application Stores (Android)
As many paid apps MobileKnox contains two pieces of apps: Firstly, the freely available app which provides all features (e.g., create and securely save entries) including the premium ones (e.g, synchronization) which are only available for free during a seven days trial period. This app is called “MobileKnox” in the application stores. Secondly, an app that can only be downloaded from the application stores if you pay 1.99€ plus taxes. This app is called “MobileKnox Premium Key” and activates the premium features of MobileKnox forever. The “MobileKnox” app is available in many different application stores:
Unfortunately, the “MobileKnox Premium Key” app cannot be downloaded from most of these application stores. The reason is that only a few of these application stores offer a licencing service that allows “MobileKnox Premium Key” to verify if a particular user already paid for the app. Without such a service it is easy for crackers to download the “MobileKnox Premium Key” and crack the app so that it can be made available to everybody for free. This would negatively affect my revenue streams which means I do not have the resources to spend more time on improving MobileKnox. So far, the following application stores offer a licencing service:
  • AndAppStore
  • Android Market
  • AndroidPit
  • SlideME
  • Camangi

AndSpot and Appoke are working on licensing services but it is unclear when it will be available. The AndroidPit licensing service is build on top of the Android Market. However, the licensing services from the other application stores are different to the Android Market licensing service meaning that application developers have to spend a lot of time to integrate the different services.

Given the different licensing services from the various application stores I already started developing a library that contains all these services. The goal of this endeavor is to provide a single and easy-to-use library that communicates with all the different licensing services.
The rule which licensing service should be selected for querying about a license is derived from the application store client that is installed on the smart-phone. It can be assumed that an app is not licensed from a particular application store if the according application store client is not installed.

Do you want to participate in this development? If so just drop me a mail and I will provide you a SVN account to the source code repository.

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 14:16 2011-01-09 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

How Do You Handle Various Android Application Stores? (Android)
As you probably know I am a developer of a few applications for Android. As a developer I am interested in spreading my applications a far as possible. Some of my applications display advertisements so spreading them means increasing my revenue. So, I checked all the different application stores that are available for Android. I counted more than 18. For many of them I created an account and submitted my applications. Of course, the Android Market is mandatory. Further, I selected SlideMe, AndroidPit, AndAppStore, AppLibs, and Handster, just to name a few application stores.

I see significant downloads from all these application stores. This is great as it proves that the economics around the different application stores are working. Such a healthy application store infrastructure is important for Android as it makes it open to many extra hardware devices and frees it from content restrictions inflicted by the Android Market.

From a developer point of view the various application stores add to the complexity of handling applications. First, I have to collect the download and sales numbers manually from the various application stores. Additional information such as download region and devices used by customers are not available from all application stores. This makes it cumbersome and tedious for me to track relevant information I usually process to manage advertisement about my applications. Secondly, the update procedure is far more time-consuming. Handling eight application stores means that I have to submit an update eight times. To make it even worse, the different application store have different procedures to submit updates.

So, my question is do you know any tool that handles this complexity by cooperating with the various application stores? It should be fairly easy to develop such a tool that is able to collect download and sales numbers and manages the procedures to submit an application update to the different application stores. What do you think?

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 00:23 2010-12-14 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

PingPong Pings IPv6 Addresses (Android)
I just upgraded my DSL-router firmware and now it provides a 6-to-4 tunnel. This allows my Nexus One to connect to the Internet by using IPv6. As you can see from the screenshot, PingPing is also capable of pinging IPv6 addresses. :-)

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 00:49 2010-09-28 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

PingPong 1.5.0 (Android)
Today I released PingPong 1.5.0. This release contains some power saving improvements. For instance, if PingPong is no longer visible because another is covering it it stops pinging. As soon as it gets visible again it restarts pinging automatically. This saves battery power while providing great services.

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 20:48 2010-09-02 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

Update on PingPong (Android)
Today, I released version 1.4.0 of PingPong. This is major about release as it contains some minor bug fixes and some improvements. The improvements are as follows: Firstly, a new progress bar is added that is shown during hostname resolution. This means that the user is informed about ongoing work if a hostname is entered and the DNS systems is queried to resolve the hostname to an IP address. Especially, if the smart-phone is connected by UMTS or EDGE to the Internet it can take some time to get a response from the DNS system. Secondly, Admob mobile marketing is added to give me the opportunity to learn more about the Admob ecosystem. I am eager to learn more how mobile marketing works and how well Admob is integrated into Android. So far, I am really impressed about what Admob is doing. The subsequently shown picture shows how Admob is integrated into PingPong. I tried to minimize the impact of the space requirements of Admob on the user experience of PingPong. For that I optimized the layouts and I think I did a good job! :-)


Finally, I would like to reference an article over at SearchNetworking. In this article they are talking about PingPong and how it can be used. Thanks guys!

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 01:07 2010-08-04 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

MobileKnox for Android: Second Preview (Android)
The automatic lock for MobileKnox is finished. If MobileKnox is unused for a certain amount of time access to sensitive data stored in it is restricted by an automatic locking mechanism. To regain access to MobileKnox the master password must be entered. The following picture shows the screen that asks for the master password in order to unlock MobileKnox.


The automatic locking mechanism can be configured as shown in the subsequently listed picture. Besides enabling and disabling the automatic lock the amount of time that must elapse before the lock is activated can be configured.


We are getting closer to a first release of MobileKnox for Android. Stay tuned! ;-)

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 00:31 2010-06-23 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

MobileKnox for Android - Preview (Android)
We are currently working hard to get MobileKnox running on Android. As we have already spend some time most of MobileKnox's core features are implemented and tested:
  • Bullet-proof encryption:
    • AES 256 encryption
    • SHA256 and SHA512 hash functions
  • Categories and entries
  • Import of encrypted XML data generated by MobileKnox or DesktopKnox
The next tasks are to implement and test:
  • Synchronization
  • Auto-Logout
A brief preview will show you the current state of the work. Screen 1 shows you the login screen. The list of the categories and the menu are shown in Screen 2. In Screen 3, an entry is displayed. The highlighting of urls is shown in combination with the menu.

Screen 1:


Screen 2:


Screen 3:


We are looking for skilled beta-testers. So, please feel free to drop me an email at support@mobileknox.com if you like to participate in our beta program.

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 01:00 2010-06-15 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

PingPong Topped 1000 Downloads (Android)
After I released PingPong into the free applications world the download rates just sky-rocketed. Two days ago the download meter showed 1000 downloads are crossed. Currently, more than 50 downloads can be counted a day. Based on this huge user base I am highly motivated to support and expand the features of PingPong. What are the features you are missing? What are the features you are looking for? Stay tuned to get the latest news about PingPong. ;-)

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 16:49 2010-05-13 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

PingPong for Free (Android)
Unfortunately, PingPong was not a real success so far. I just sold 85 units. Hence I decided to give it away for free and see how the download numbers develop. If it does well I will think about adding some advertisements. However, so far, PingPong comes just for free without any advertisements.

Enjoy using PingPong.

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 01:14 2010-03-30 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

New Versions of NATnIP and PingPong (Android)
I just released improved versions of NATnIP and PingPong. These versions contain only minor changes. The biggest change is that I fixed a bug in PingPong that caused some problems on Motorola Droid / Milestone phones. Additionally, I added up-to-date screenshots of PingPong to the Android Market. These screenhots are also shown in the following two pictures:


Have fun using NATnIP and PingPong.

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 17:48 2010-02-07 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

NATnIP 1.2.9 released (Android)
After a few month of no development I spend a few hours to further improve NATnIP. The biggest new feature is that NATnIP now supports different STUN servers which can be selected from the settings menu. The screenshots show the new features and changes:


Have fun using NATnIP.

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 23:26 2009-12-22 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

PingPong 1.1.0 released (Android)
PingPong 1.1.0 fixed a minor hiccup with the representation of the logs.

Have fun with PingPong 1.1.0. :-)
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 20:37 2009-06-27 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

NATnIP 1.2.7 released (Android)
NATnIP 1.2.7 contains a few user interface tweaks to make the look and feel similar to what you have seen from PingPong. Additionally, NATnIP 1.2.7 is localized to German. This means, NATnIP is now available in two languages: German and English.
The following screenshot shows the improved user interface in German.


Have fun using NATnIP.

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 14:59 2009-06-21 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (1)

PingPing 1.0.1 (Android)
PingPong 1.0.1 is ready for prime time. PingPong 1.0.1 comes with an improved user interface.
Have a look!

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 00:52 2009-06-20 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

PingPong 1.0.0 released (Android)
I just finished the development of PingPong 1.0.0. PingPong tests whether a particular host is reachable. For this, it first tries to use ICMP. If this fails, it utilizes a TCP connection on port 7 (echo) to the host. PingPong also measures the round trip time and packet loss.
The subsequently shown picture is a screenshot of the application running in the emulator.


Have fun using PingPong.

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 00:48 2009-06-19 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

NATnIP 1.2.6 released (Android)
I improved the user interface a bit. Any comments about feature requests or further improvements?

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 14:18 2009-06-11 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

NATnIP 1.2.4 released (Android)
I squashed out a few more bugs and improved the user interface. Have fun using NATnIP 1.2.4.

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 22:44 2009-06-09 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

NATnIP 1.2.3 released (Android)
The latest release of NATnIP improves some rare conditions such as no active network interface is available or the STUN server is not reachable. In these cases an error message is shown.

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 13:24 2009-06-06 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

NATnIP 1.1.0 released (Android)
I just released NATnIP 1.1.0. This release shows not only the IP addresses that are assigned to a network interface but also the hostnames. The following picture shows the screen after the detection process is finished.

Additionally, a bug is fixed that caused a never disappearing "Please wait while detecting ..." message if the screen orientation was changed during the detection process.

Have fun using NATnIP.

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 00:32 2009-06-05 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

NATnIP in Development (Android)
I am working on an Android application that uses the JSTUN library to detect the public IP address and typ of NAT that is associated to a network interface of a device. This is a great finger exercise while learning more about the Android software.

Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 19:40 2009-05-31 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)