I am going with route #2, and I haven't had too many problems up till now. The major stumbling block I see in the business side of things is that I cannot charge more for a Tablet version than I can for the phone version, even though the usuability can be much greater on the tablet version.
Option #1 is not the best, as you pointed out, you cannot force the users to pay twice. I can see forcing them to pay the difference in price if they upgrade to a tablet, but to make them buy the app all over is a huge no-no and you would end up with some very unhappy users -- and rightfully so. I think there needs to be a way to set price points based on the form factor of the device. Hopefully, the Amazon market will have this feature. On Mar 18, 12:13 pm, Chris Stewart <[email protected]> wrote: > Now that I'm working on a tablet-centric version of my app, I'm considering > how it will impact my existing application in the Market. As far as I can > see it, there are two ways this can go: > > 1) Leave your existing app as-is in the Market. Build a tablet version > taking full advantage of Android 3.0, setting your minSdk to 11, using your > existing code base (as applicable) as a library to share core code, and sell > the apps independent of each other. Here you'll need to manage two code > bases, even if "only" the UI side which we all know varies greatly from app > to app. You're also requiring users to purchase twice effectively, assuming > they want the app on both their phone and the tablet-centric version on > their tablet. I guess the phone version would still work on the tablet, > just not optimized for it. > > 2) Integrate fragments into your existing application and bundle in the > tablet version along with the phone version. You'll need to drop support > for Android 1.5 for the compatibility library, work around API differences > between the phone and tablet APIs at run-time, and handle your UI activities > and views differently between platforms. I'm not sure about that last part > -- but it seems like with such a different UI concept behind 3.0 with the > Action Bar and the general flow of an application can be so different, that > you might need to break that apart. Could be very wrong there however and > would love for someone to show me otherwise. > > There are a few things at play here. It's the battle on the technical side > of dealing with different applications (package names, projects in Eclipse, > apks, etc). It's also bringing into question how you want to manage your > app; whether you want to charge for a tablet-optimized version or include it > with the phone app someone has already purchased. > > Depending on what I learn related to packaging tablet specific features to > an existing phone app, I'm quite undecided on which way I'll go. I suspect > many of you have already been thinking about this very subject and I'm > curious how you're planning to handle it. Please do include more options as > you see them. How do the different API versions impact your thinking on the > subject? > > -- > Chris Stewarthttp://chriswstewart.com -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
