Necuno
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Piracy May Kill Android Market
Android operating system is present on almost every smartphone today, but the welfare of this business is threatened by the stringent problems piracy causes.
Android’s applications are open-source and thanks to its loose authentication instruments piracy began taking its toll. The research was carried out by the Yankee Group, location-based services and software provider Skyhook. The results showed that 27% of the Android developers think piracy has become a real problem for the market. Over 75% of them claimed it was very easy to copy and republish an Android application, leave alone pirate forums facilitating this activity. Such behavior has caused a shift in the industry business model, because a lot of developers choose to give away their work and profit from in-app purchases or advertisements. That’s why the Android market, which was expected to even overthrow Apple’s App Store in the nearest future, started to fall apart.
The security experts point out that app piracy is widespread in the mobile phone industry, which means that the industry needs to take an approach that circumvents it entirely. Actually, pirating an Android application is not that difficult, as you only need to download a legal copy of the app, hack its code, modify the source and republish. In most cases, such pirated programs end up in users’ mobile phones, as Android allows to download software from any app store or site.
Meanwhile, customers often don’t even know that they are purchasing or downloading a pirated version of the app, and therefore developers have to deal with users’ complaints when hacked applications start to fall apart. In addition, piracy also damages developers’ income, because they rely on the public to earn money.
At the same time, the research mentioned above revealed that Google’s response to piracy differs from what was expected: more than a half of developers believe that the search giant adopted a far too relaxed position in regards to their app market policies. Besides, the developers even asked direct help from Google, but the latter let them down with the results.
The developers think that Google could mandate a certification and badge program for markets, granting them the right to enforce transactions. Moreover, it can implement payment receipts which can be verified on the Internet, as well as build-in codes making the product harder to be tempered with. None of such steps are believed to be able to considerably reduce developer freedom. However, they can at least make piracy a bit more difficult.
