Is the Android Market available to users in China now? With their Android phone coming out very soon, what will the market look like for them? Only free apps? Any apps at all?
There are over a billion potential customers in China (admittedly, most can't afford the Android phone, but there's still a lot of consumers). It wouldn't be too hard to translate apps to Chinese, or at least 'passable' Chinese. The big question is when payable apps will be available for China? Will it take so long that most users in China will take their phones to shops to get them rooted and just use copies of software? Using pirated software is very common in China. If the market were to open up quickly, it might curb that habit and make China a huge source of revenue. Where I live in Thailand, the legitimate iPhone has finally arrived a few months ago. Almost everyone here has jail broken iPhones, all loaded with apps/games for free by the various shops that do the jail breaking. It's been such a long wait for the iPhone, that the Thai people just figured out a way to get it themselves. Now the locals don't want to use the App store to buy apps, they'd rather have a bunch of free ones from the local shops. Ease of access (convenience) can change that habit. Why go through the trouble of hacking a phone, also gaining the potential security problems and bugs, when apps can be purchased easily and maintain improved stability/security? When people see how easy it is to just go to a shop and pay a few buck to get tons of apps installed instead of paying for them through the market, they may ultimately just skip the market altogether. There's potentially a huge amount of money to be made in China. Is anyone at Google keen to this? If Google waits to long, it might be lost. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" 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-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
