Android G2 by HTC

In only a week, the second Android device will come to the market: the HTC Magic, also named the G2.  The first country to get it is Germany with Vodafone.

Germany is definitely going fast on Android, with the first Android phone by Samsung coming in June. O2 Germany will exclusively offer the Samsung i7500.

Next to phones, Android is even appearing on the first netbook within three months.

It’s good to see more Android devices coming. The Android Market is a great opportunity for developers. The faster Android get’s a big worldwide reach, the better.

AdMob releases a very interesting report every month on worldwide mobile ad requests they serve. This month the attention was on Android.

An interesting fact extracted from the report is that of all ads that AdMob serves on the Android G1, 50% is coming from applications. So, of the 72M ad impressions, 36M did not come from mobile website ads, but from advertsing in Android applications.

Monthly ad impressions on Android served by AdMob

This indicates two things:

1. There is a growth of 44% in impressions measured on Android. This is closely related to the growth of Android devices in the market;
2. The fact that 50% of these impressions come from apps clearly shows that developers are taking the opportunity to monetize their applications using advertising seriously.

It will be very interesting to see how this looks when Google offers paid applications in more countries soon. Will developers jump on the opportunity to charge for their app? Will we consequently see the share of adversting in apps decrease?

So you want to monetize your Android application? Offering paid applications in Android Market is currently only supported for US and UK developers. Support for more countries should be coming soon.

Since the Android launch several developers have been offering trials to show users what their app can do, and monetize from an upsell to a paid version. Google added a section in the distribution agreement on what they do and don’t allow for trials:

You may not collect future charges from users for copies of the Products that those users were initially allowed to download for free. This is not intended to prevent distribution of free trial versions of the Product with an “upsell” option to obtain the full version of the Product: Such free trials for Products are encouraged. However, if you want to collect fees after the free trial expires, you must collect all fees for the full version of the Product through the Payment Processor on the Market.

Android Market has no support for in-application billing yet. So instead of upgrading a trial to a full paid version there is a workaround:

• You need to upload 2 different applications; an expiring trial and a paid version;
• Promote your paid version in the trial with a link to the Market;
• Billing for the paid version needs to be within Android market. No serials or activation codes.

Both your trial and paid versions will have their own ranking in Android Market. So a very successful trial version does not mean that your paid version will get high in the list. Check out the full distribution agreement.