Android Market and Google Checkout

Hi,

I joined this community today and look forward for good discussion with you Android experts. I really hope to learn a lot from you.

Short intro: I am from the developer Cellictica, which makes apps also for J2ME, Windows Mobile, iPhone, Blackberry and soon also for Bada.

We have had already two months an app available, speech-to-speech translator, for Android but we can't launch it because we happen to come from Finland, which is not supported by Google Checkout, i.e. we can't set up a merchant account for paid apps.

Does anyone know if Google is ever going to expand their country coverage and when? It's a bit frustrating to develop something and not get it to the market.

We could do an in-app payment version, but Google contract bans any possible revenues outside Android Market mechanisms. Not an alternative.

How can we get our app for the Android users? We are paying too much for underlying technologies to give it for free.

1. Sell it in Handango and similar. But that's not the place Android users typically go for?
2. Set up a company in Germany for example. But will we ever get our investment back for the paper work and administration?
3. Partnering with one of you who has the possibility to sell something in Android Market. We would be losing with some company visibility but at least the users would get possibility to discover the app.

I think that option 3 is what I would go for at this stage. Would one of you like to take it to Andorid market? Maybe AndroidPit would like to publish it?

Here's a small video of the app:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c0hS4newrY
The same for competing platform:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cHeyoDcpF4


Kimmo

That is amazing, especially with all the different languages supported. Fabien takes care of this type of stuff for AndroidPIT right now, so I'll send this along to him. Feel free to contact him yourself here. He is pretty busy though, so it might take him a bit to respond.

I do believe that AndroidPIT has the ability to host your app for you, but that needs to be re-confirmed with Fabien. Have you thought about joining the AndroidPIT developer community?

Also, Google expanded their countries about 2 months ago, maybe a bit less. They said they were working on expanding the list of countries with paid apps ability quickly, so you may not have much longer to wait. Google's post on the subject

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Hi Douglas,

Thank's for the info. Unfortunately still not available in Finland though and as you suggested, I took contact with Fabian.

Let's hope to see this app live on Android Market one way or another.

Kimmo