Kev's Development Toolbox

In only a few hours since I published my first Android app I’ve already had 82 downloads and 3 comments, and been rated 3.5/5. A couple of good comments too, so I’ll take a look at adding those features as an update.

This was an experiment to learn the Android API, but also out of curiosity to see if you offer an app for free and place banner ads in it, how many page impressions/clicks can you get from a free mobile app? I’ll be posting an update at the end of the month.

I’ve been playing around with the Android SDK and just finished my first Android app. It’s a simple countdown timer that displays a countdown to a selected date and time, displaying remaining days, hours, minutes and seconds.

The app is already published to the Android Market. The upload and publishing steps were incredibly simple. Google doesn’t have a browsable online store other than the Market app on Android phones and the Top Paid and Top Free lists on the Android Market website. Cykret however is a great website however that is an online searchable frontend to the Android Market.

Search for my app with the name ‘Countdown Droid’ on your Android phone, or view the search page for my app on the Cykret site here.

See here.

Ballmer – really? Why don’t you do something productive like develop a product that people actually want to buy and use? So glad I ditched my Windows Mobile piece of junk and got an Android phone instead. Still not perfect but light years ahead in terms of usability – ease of use and flexibility are off the charts compared to Windows Mobile. Steve – maybe you should control yourself and think about that for a second instead of making a complete ass of yourself.

There’s been some discussion online from Android application developers comparing their monthly income of Android apps vs iPhone apps. The iPhone has such a massive user base at this point that it’s hard to make these comparisons, but what I find interesting is whether to make money from selling your apps or give them away free and include banner apps inside them. If sales are currently low on the Android marketplace then you’re not going to get rich selling 99c apps, but are you going to do any better with free apps including banner ads? Here’s an interesting discussion <a href="http://www.4feets.com/2009/02/selling-apps-or-running-ads/"here, and here’s another comparison from an established iPhone and Android developer.