Piracy problems undermine Android's growth against iPhone
By Daniel Eran Dilger
Published: 08:00 PM EST
Despite strong growth in first half of 2010, Google's Android platform is still not attractive to commercial development because of rampant app piracy and limitation in security and international sales through Google's store.
According to a report by Jay Yarow of Silicon Alley Insider, a developer of one of Android's top ten apps is seeing 97 percent of players in Asia using an illegal copy, 70 percent in Europe, and 43 percent in North America.
The game, named Radiant, sells for just $2.40 but Android users find it more attractive to pirate the game, given that its so easy on the Android platform to steal developers' work without paying anything. Google's planned solution is to allow developers to phone home at regular intervals to determine if they're pirated or not, shutting down if they're deemed to be pirated.
Apple's iOS App Store simply ties purchased apps to the user's iTunes account, making piracy difficult enough for casual users to prefer to actually buy apps instead, without any phone home authorization steps. The fact that most iPhone apps are priced low means that developers can make money in volume sales, because most apps aren't being pirated. Piracy largely prevented mobile software from ever being viable prior to Apple's App Store.
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