Google’s Andy Ruben talks about Android Market

03 October 2008 by Staff Editor

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Andy Rubin, head of Google’s Android project, spoke this week about his visions for Android Market. Rubin discussed application bandwidth limits and, more importantly perhaps, how Android Market will differ from Apples iTunes App Store.

Unlike the App Store, Google will not impose the many restrictions that iPhone application developers are unhappy about. Bandwidth limitations that hurt iPhone app development will not plague Android applications, T-Mobile has set no limit on the bandwidth allowed to any given application. T-Mobile has asked that developers with free apps, that take more than 15 Megabytes a month for a single user, pay a $2 monthly fee. This policy may be a bit difficult to enforce with applications coming from the Android Market, which have no such restrictions in place.

“We want the next killer application to be written for cell phones, not the Internet,” Rubin said.
Rubin also spoke about Android application developers having the opportunity to offer free trials of their applications, before a user chooses to purchase. Developers have named the largest contributing factor behind shaky application sales on the iPhone to the lack of the free trial option. As a result of the limitations Apple has placed on applications in the App Store many developers are expected to migrate to Google’s Android platform.

[Via BusinessWeek]

Join the Discussion (7 comments)

RussianSolja

10-03-2008 07:58 AM

thats fantastic news!!!!!! Muahahaha AND ANOTHER VICTORY AND POINT FOR THE ANDROID!!!!! TAKE THAT IPHONE!!!! ONCE AGAIN THE ANDROID TAKES A STEP FOWARD! i love this site and the android OS!!!!
RegGuheert

10-03-2008 08:34 AM

Key quote:

“We want the next killer application to be written for cell phones, not the Internet,” Rubin said.

I believe this is why Google is SO successful. They seem to be close followers of Bob Cringely's book "Accidental Empires: How the boys of Silicon Valley make their millions, battle foreign competition and still can't get a date". To me, the idea of a killer application is a powerful one. When I read the statements by Balmer and Rubin, this is the glaring difference: Microsoft sees the key to selling their products as their marketing power (PUSH onto the masses) while Google sees power in appealing to the needs of the everyday people (PULL model: if you build it, they will come).

Clearly Apple is the REAL competition for the G1, as Steve Jobs continues to be one of the original masters of the killer application.

Reg
Bluesk1d

10-03-2008 08:41 AM

This is all great news for the consumer but the $2 fee that T-Mobile wants to be paid by the developers is completely absurd. This is exactly the same thing the ISPs were trying to do to Google a few years ago. They were complaining that much of the traffic on their networks was coming from or going to Google services. That is, they wanted Google to pay a fee for this traffic. You know, the traffic that was already being paid for by their customers. Their custoemrs were simply using the broadband they pay for and just because many of them happened to be visiting google sites, the ISPs wanted to double dip and get paid twice for the same bandwidth. Naturally, Google laughed heartily and said, "Hell no." T-Mobile customers will already be paying data plan fees for any data that goes to/from the various app servers. In short, T-Mobile can shove the $2. Nice try though. Again, just like before with the ISPs vs. Google, it is NOT the app developers who are using up your precious network, it's your paying customers.
swaney29

10-03-2008 09:38 AM

you took this from me
phillramey

10-03-2008 09:51 AM

Cool stuff. Just one note though. You may want to update the spelling of "Ruben" in the title to match the article.
moooseman

10-03-2008 12:43 PM

so am i the only one who thinks that it might be a bad thing to charge developers 2 bucks a month to put up a free app? it might discourage developers. What does everyone else think?
refused9150

10-03-2008 12:46 PM

iPhone web apps are often more useful than the applications they allow. We just need them for the device rather than the web. Having them as web apps creates a lot of problems because they cant take advantage of all the hardware.