Interesting read, Jake. In April I played around with Android development and figured I could create a simple agenda like widget that reads data from a Domino server mail database and show it a homescreen. It took me about one day and a half to get it to work the way I wanted (there was nothing too complex in it). So I figured I would through it onto the market, but I wanted to see if there was a market for Domino centric applications in the paid apps area, that's way I came up with the price of 0.79 €.
I thought considering that I used a day and a half in development (rounding up to about 1,500 € of development work value I could have put into something else) until now 300 people decided to purchase the product, which leaves the company I work for and allowed me to conduct this experiment with 165 € of return in investment. I don't event start to think about phone call and e-mail support I've given to people to whom it was actually important enough to get the widget to work in case there were difficulties. Those who didn't usually are the ones who rate the product, thus leaving it with a two star rating in the market (I have got 10 ratings).
One of them even wrote that he/she got no answer from the developer when he/she asked for support. I tried to find out the contact data needed to satisfy even this customer, unfortunately, between the username in the comment section and the payment data I was not able to pinpoint the person who reported the problem in the comments section of the product.
To me Android development is still something very interesting, but would I publish an app on the market again? Probably not, I'd rather distribute the APK some other way (reducing my reach to the conventional area we're active in). People rating with stars and giving comments I cannot interact with might be too much of a threat on the image of the company I work for, simply speaking.
Interesting read, Jake. In April I played around with Android development and figured I could create a simple agenda like widget that reads data from a Domino server mail database and show it a homescreen. It took me about one day and a half to get it to work the way I wanted (there was nothing too complex in it). So I figured I would through it onto the market, but I wanted to see if there was a market for Domino centric applications in the paid apps area, that's way I came up with the price of 0.79 €.
I thought considering that I used a day and a half in development (rounding up to about 1,500 € of development work value I could have put into something else) until now 300 people decided to purchase the product, which leaves the company I work for and allowed me to conduct this experiment with 165 € of return in investment. I don't event start to think about phone call and e-mail support I've given to people to whom it was actually important enough to get the widget to work in case there were difficulties. Those who didn't usually are the ones who rate the product, thus leaving it with a two star rating in the market (I have got 10 ratings).
One of them even wrote that he/she got no answer from the developer when he/she asked for support. I tried to find out the contact data needed to satisfy even this customer, unfortunately, between the username in the comment section and the payment data I was not able to pinpoint the person who reported the problem in the comments section of the product.
To me Android development is still something very interesting, but would I publish an app on the market again? Probably not, I'd rather distribute the APK some other way (reducing my reach to the conventional area we're active in). People rating with stars and giving comments I cannot interact with might be too much of a threat on the image of the company I work for, simply speaking.