Adventures in Android-Land

Android. There, I said it the ‘A’ word.

Like you, at first I was reluctant to make an Android app. I love my iPhone. I’ve been making a living exclusively as an iPhone developer since the App Store was opened to third-party developers in July 2008. I’ve had an Apple computer in the house since 1983 (Apple IIe) – and I finally got rid of my last Windows PC a few weeks ago. So, moving to a competing platform seemed at first almost like a betrayal.

I’ve been keeping an eye on Android for a while now (ironically, I came back from the Apple WWDC in June with a new Android NexusOne phone but not an iPhone4). Did I like the NexusOne? Nope, hated it. Couldn’t figure out how to turn it on, the scrolling was all jerky, the four buttons at the bottom were confusing (especially the ‘home’ button which is right next to the spacebar on the virtual keypad, so if you’re typing a message and accidentally press home you lose all the text you’ve entered).

And then, to top it off, after spending a whole $25 joining the Android Developer program I discovered that as an Aussie developer I couldn’t even sell apps in the Marketplace (something to do with Google Checkout not being available in Australia).

So, I put the NexusOne in the drawer and got back to working on Hover World for the iPhone.

Then on December 6 I read this article – Angry Birds On Android Projected To Generate $1 Million Per Month In Advertising. Hmmm, might be time to look into this Android thing again.

That day I fired up our copy of Unity3D for Android and loaded up our existing iPhone Unity3D project “Crazy Snowboard”. Fixed-up a couple lines of code (mainly to do with where we saved the game state file), changed the build target to “Android” and an hour or two later it was up and running at 30 fps on the NexusOne.

As usual, getting the last 5% of the app done took 95% of the development time, but by December 16th we we’re ready to publish, and “Crazy Snowboard” hit the Android Marketplace. It started off pretty slow with 638 installs on the first day (by contrast that same day the free iPhone version of “Crazy Snowboard” had 11,745 installs).

As this was really just an experiment we didn’t bother doing any marketing, plus who do you market to anyway? – TouchArcade doesn’t do Android game reviews. The only marketing we did was on an Android app discovery site called ‘AppBrain‘ which we bought $100 worth of ads on. App Brain also gives you access to some interesting data on your app:

To date we’ve had 117,047 installs on Android. Currently we are #15 on the Android Free Games Arcade & Action category and just cracked the Overall Free Games Top 50. We also made the AppBrain ‘Hot this week’ which has contributed to our increasing install numbers (kind of nice to be on the same chart as Angry Birds for once!):

Why Free

We decided to release “Crazy Snowboard” as a free ad-supported game on Android. The main reason we went free was because of the Angry Birds article – if it’s good enough for them, then it’s good enough for us! Also, in general, I think people getting Android phones are people that don’t want to spend a lot of money on a smartphone and are less willing to spend money on apps. Here’s the AdMob revenue report for “Crazy Snowboard” so far:

 

 

As you can see it’s been a pretty successful experiment and a great way to generate some additional revenue from an existing asset with a minimal amount of extra work. If you are looking at Android (and use a multi-platform third-party dev tool like Unity3D), then I can highly recommend having a go at Android.

The Good:

• There is no app approval process
  This was a shock. As soon as you upload your apps they are available in the Marketplace. No delays. Instant.
• Lots of different phones
  The Android market is growing at an amazing rate. According to a May 2010 report by AdMob (owned by Google) traffic from the Android platform has grown 29% month-over-month since May 2009
• Great reporting tools
  One thing Apple hasn’t done well is the iTunes reporting. Having access to the detailed Android app reports has giving me something to do over xmas while iTunes Connect is closed.
• Link to your app with a bar code
  Yes, you can create one of these for your iPhone app, but on Android these QR codes are the default way to link to your app:
  

The Bad:

• There is no app approval process
  You thought there was some rubbish in the Apple App Store? Well, just dig around in Android Marketplace to see some really, really bad stuff.
• Lots of different phones
  This means different screen sizes and aspect ratios, processors, input devices, etc. You thought iPad, iPod and retina display was hard to support, wait until you go Android!
• Link to your app with a bar code
  Buying Android apps on your computer is not easy (especially when you are used to getting apps on iTunes).
• Return policy
  The Google Marketplace has made it too easy to do returns. The way it is set-up you can pretty much buy a game, play for a while and then return it. No questions asked.

Useful Links

Here’s some links to Android sites that we’ve found useful:

• Become an official Android Developer (US$25): Android Market
• Download the Android SDK
• Create cross-platform games: Unity3D
• Sell ads in your Android app: AdMob
• Promote your Android app: AppBrain

It’s a brave new world out there! …so hurry up before the big guys discover it (quick – EA only has 4 Android apps)!

UPDATE Dec 30, 2010: Some additional links for app promotion and distribution:

• T-Mobile Partner Network
• GetJar