Yes I believe your line of thinking is correct. What will most likely happen is when JellyBean becomes more widely adopted, developers will release their apps to 4.1+ *only*. This would fight piracy and most of the 1.5-2.2 phone owners will probably be upgrading to ICS phones anyways.
In terms of backwards compatibility, the encrypted .apk was a feature of Jelly Bean, I don't believe it was a part of the Google Play Store. I'm not exactly sure why not, but it may be safe to assume that this feature will only be available on devices with 4.1+ On Tuesday, July 24, 2012 10:29:33 AM UTC-7, Kevin wrote: > > The question now remains, will Google update Google Play Market on > previous android versions to implement this behavior. If not, then > developers may choose to not make their new shiny apps available for > older versions of Android to prevent piracy of their app. > > I am not sure if Google can even update older versions of Android to > support this method without updating the entire ROM, as it has to be a > low-level android feature not governed by an APK. > > On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 11:52 AM, seattleandrew <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Yes I think that's the concern is that developers are releasing apps > which > > can be (arguably) easily pirated, take Madfinger's recent Dead Trigger > news > > for instance. I believe that since the .apk will be encrypted through > the > > Google Play store per device, it will mean that the .apk will be device > > specific and cannot be installed on other devices, even if it's the same > > model. This should ease a lot of developers concerns with piracy. > > > > On Sunday, July 1, 2012 2:09:26 AM UTC-7, reox wrote: > >> > >> Am 01.07.2012 01:31, schrieb Jeffrey Walton: > >> > Hi All, > >> > > >> > From Earlance's earlier post on App Encryption > >> > (http://developer.android.com/about/versions/jelly-bean.html): > >> > > >> > Starting with Android 4.1, Google Play will help protect > >> > application assets by > >> > encrypting all paid apps with a device-specific key before they > >> > are delivered > >> > and stored on a device. > >> > > >> > What threat is being mitigated here? An information leak of > >> > intellectual proerty? Unauthorized patching of applications on a > >> > rooted device? > >> they are only talking about paid apps, so i think its about pirating > >> apps... > >> > >> greetings > > > > -- > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups > > "Android Security Discussions" group. > > To view this discussion on the web visit > > https://groups.google.com/d/msg/android-security-discuss/-/3N7ZO_l9YY0J. > > > 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-security-discuss?hl=en. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Security Discussions" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/android-security-discuss/-/bzktXco0VcYJ. 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-security-discuss?hl=en.
