As my Android apps started becoming more popular, I started seeing piracy of my apps skyrocket. At the time, Google didn't have their application licensing system in place, so I built my own. With the licensing system in place for my apps, I was also free to distribute and sell my application binary on my own, without fear of it being pirated.
After seeing piracy drop dramatically and talking with other Android developers with the same problems, I decided to build a site around it and sell my system to other developers.
It took me about 2 weeks to build www.androidlicenser.com and I saw my first $40/month subscription within 5 days. It still brings in about $500/month consistently. Google has since come out with their own licensing system, but it suffers from the limitation of it only working for apps purchased through the Android Market which, in a world with many Android Markets, isn't good enough.
What happens if someone bypasses your client library in the APK file? Also, will the application fail to launch if it cannot reach androidlicenser.com (or wherever it goes) to verify the user when the app is launched?
As always, the APK needs to be obfuscated to prevent hackers from decompiling the code and bypassing the client library.
If internet connection is unavailable or androidlicenser.com is unreachable, it is completely upto the developer to determine what to do next. My best practice recommendation is to allow the user to continue to use the application.
Looks like a useful too in android dev arsenal with Amazon Appstore launching..is there some type of blog post, etc as I would like to do some type of post for ChicagoAndroid.com which I am a member of..
After seeing piracy drop dramatically and talking with other Android developers with the same problems, I decided to build a site around it and sell my system to other developers.
It took me about 2 weeks to build www.androidlicenser.com and I saw my first $40/month subscription within 5 days. It still brings in about $500/month consistently. Google has since come out with their own licensing system, but it suffers from the limitation of it only working for apps purchased through the Android Market which, in a world with many Android Markets, isn't good enough.