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The H Open wrote an interesting article on a post from developer Jon Lech Johansen’s blog. Johansen, co-founder and CTO of doubleTwist, had some pretty legitimate complaints about and suggestions for the Android Market. For example:

  • The Android Market is available in 46 countries; developers can only offer paid apps in 13 of those
  • Prices for foreign apps are not displayed in a users local currency – they are displayed in the dev’s currency
  • Developers can’t customize their price by country – they set it in one currency, and it is automatically converted into others at the current exchange rate
  • Foreign apps can’t be paid for with American Express or billed to your phone plan
  • No support for in-app changelogs or payments
  • Google is too hands-off about the market - there are more than a few apps that are blatantly illegal

All in all, they seem like very reasonable complaints to me, and most seem like they would be (comparatively) easy enough to fix.

The article goes on to list some other issues dev’s have with the marketplace:

  • The web version of the Android Market shows a fraction of the apps that are available
  • The Android Market’s return policy is too generous
  • Spam comments need to be better controlled and more actively removed

Again, pretty reasonable if you ask me. I’ve said before that the Marketplace is doing well as a whole, but I’ve also acknowledged that dev’s still prefer the Apple App Store.

[Source: H Open, Nanocr (John Lech Johansen’s Blog)]