Mobile development: Which platform to choose a novice developer from the countries of the former USSR
Many developers want to have additional income and if everything goes fine, then generally start working independently. A very promising direction is mobile development. I would like to tell you what difficulties you may face when you want to make money on your program if you live in one of the countries of the former USSR (I live in Belarus). For Russians, these difficulties are usually not, but I think this information will also be interesting to them.
And so you decided to write a program for a mobile platform to earn on it. You can earn in two main ways:
In the first case, you will need to get developer status in order to distribute the program through official stores. In the second case, the status of the seller is also optional. <\ P>
So what kind of problems may arise with obtaining the status of the developer and the status of the seller. I will consider the platform from the worst to the best.
Everything is very bad here. Officially you can become a developer if you live in Russia.
And given the very low popularity of Windows Phone 7 in the world, if you are not a Russian, then my advice, do not waste your time on it.
In general, Microsoft’s position is absolutely not clear to me. Why forbid writing even free applications. Why ignore a huge army of programmers from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and others. Notice, by no means small countries.
You can get the status of a developer for free (although in the future Samsung will face the introduction of an annual fee). But it is very difficult to push a free program with advertising into Samsung Apps (it was previously banned altogether, now it seems possible, but as far as I know, no one has yet succeeded).
So you need the status of the seller. Restrictions on obtaining the status of the seller from Samsung is not. But this took me almost a month. In addition to filling out all their data, they also require a scanned passport and a scanned “proof of account”. But with the second document I had problems. I took the bank details, printed and scanned. And received a refusal because they did not accept the “proof of account”. Why not accepted did not explain. After the third attempt (and each attempt took a week, on Monday I made a request, and on Thursday or Friday I received a refusal (well, they considered the application very quickly)) I wrote an angry letter: “why do you refuse me, don't you need developers ". And after a couple of hours (and not after a week, which is surprising), I received an answer, where they explained to me that they needed an official certificate from the bank about the presence of an account on the official form. This certificate cost me $ 10 (the usual certificate in my bank is given free of charge, but on an official form (a form with several degrees of protection) - for $ 10). After that, I was finally given the status of a seller.
So, if you live in any of the countries of the former USSR, then you will be able to sell software through Samsung Apps.
But the platform has a very low yield. My program on the key markets for Bada (Germany, France, UK, Russia) is in the region of 40-60 places in the Top Paid among all categories, while sales are only 7-15 copies per day in each of the markets. So you can’t make much money on Bada.
')
Become a developer for Android can be a citizen of any country. Pay with a $ 20 card and you are a registered developer and you can immediately publish free apps on the Android Market.
But to sell the program, if you are not a citizen of Russia, you can not. I must say that a year ago, even the Russians could not sell the program. At the same time, another division of Google, namely Admob, transfers money to any country in the world without any problems. Thus, the only explanation why you cannot register as a seller is that Google does not want. With this attitude of the company to the developers, there is nothing surprising about the low sales in the Android Market.
Despite this, I would not say that the platform is bad. Its main advantage is a huge number of users. You just need to focus on the fact that you can earn only on advertising. I work according to this scheme and I am very satisfied with the income.
Although the paid version would be released with pleasure (very much, users are asking for a paid version without ads).
The only negative point here is quite large costs. That's what it cost me: sign up $ 99, mac mini $ 750, iPod touch $ 240, iPad $ 550. And all this was brought to me from the USA, and if you buy from us ...
Otherwise, everything is fine. You can distribute both free and paid programs.
In general, I was pleasantly surprised how Apple has everything quickly and clearly. Fill out the form - received pdf - printed - filled - sent by fax (in the US even easier). The next morning in the mailbox was a letter that I was successfully registered as a developer. Then I went to iTunes Connect, clicked the button to request the status of the seller, filled out bank details and tax data (just noted that I was not from the USA) and found out the next day that the status of the seller was approved and I could publish paid applications. So, it took me less than two days to register and get seller status.
PS I did not consider Symbian, because I consider this platform to be dying, but I have to work with promising platforms. And with Blackberry, I have so negative experience that I can only advise her to the enemy.
And so you decided to write a program for a mobile platform to earn on it. You can earn in two main ways:
- by advertising (usually in the free application)
- due to sales, or the program itself or additional content to the program.
In the first case, you will need to get developer status in order to distribute the program through official stores. In the second case, the status of the seller is also optional. <\ P>
So what kind of problems may arise with obtaining the status of the developer and the status of the seller. I will consider the platform from the worst to the best.
Windows Phone 7
Everything is very bad here. Officially you can become a developer if you live in Russia.
And given the very low popularity of Windows Phone 7 in the world, if you are not a Russian, then my advice, do not waste your time on it.
In general, Microsoft’s position is absolutely not clear to me. Why forbid writing even free applications. Why ignore a huge army of programmers from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and others. Notice, by no means small countries.
Samsung bada
You can get the status of a developer for free (although in the future Samsung will face the introduction of an annual fee). But it is very difficult to push a free program with advertising into Samsung Apps (it was previously banned altogether, now it seems possible, but as far as I know, no one has yet succeeded).
So you need the status of the seller. Restrictions on obtaining the status of the seller from Samsung is not. But this took me almost a month. In addition to filling out all their data, they also require a scanned passport and a scanned “proof of account”. But with the second document I had problems. I took the bank details, printed and scanned. And received a refusal because they did not accept the “proof of account”. Why not accepted did not explain. After the third attempt (and each attempt took a week, on Monday I made a request, and on Thursday or Friday I received a refusal (well, they considered the application very quickly)) I wrote an angry letter: “why do you refuse me, don't you need developers ". And after a couple of hours (and not after a week, which is surprising), I received an answer, where they explained to me that they needed an official certificate from the bank about the presence of an account on the official form. This certificate cost me $ 10 (the usual certificate in my bank is given free of charge, but on an official form (a form with several degrees of protection) - for $ 10). After that, I was finally given the status of a seller.
So, if you live in any of the countries of the former USSR, then you will be able to sell software through Samsung Apps.
But the platform has a very low yield. My program on the key markets for Bada (Germany, France, UK, Russia) is in the region of 40-60 places in the Top Paid among all categories, while sales are only 7-15 copies per day in each of the markets. So you can’t make much money on Bada.
')
Android
Become a developer for Android can be a citizen of any country. Pay with a $ 20 card and you are a registered developer and you can immediately publish free apps on the Android Market.
But to sell the program, if you are not a citizen of Russia, you can not. I must say that a year ago, even the Russians could not sell the program. At the same time, another division of Google, namely Admob, transfers money to any country in the world without any problems. Thus, the only explanation why you cannot register as a seller is that Google does not want. With this attitude of the company to the developers, there is nothing surprising about the low sales in the Android Market.
Despite this, I would not say that the platform is bad. Its main advantage is a huge number of users. You just need to focus on the fact that you can earn only on advertising. I work according to this scheme and I am very satisfied with the income.
Although the paid version would be released with pleasure (very much, users are asking for a paid version without ads).
iOS
The only negative point here is quite large costs. That's what it cost me: sign up $ 99, mac mini $ 750, iPod touch $ 240, iPad $ 550. And all this was brought to me from the USA, and if you buy from us ...
Otherwise, everything is fine. You can distribute both free and paid programs.
In general, I was pleasantly surprised how Apple has everything quickly and clearly. Fill out the form - received pdf - printed - filled - sent by fax (in the US even easier). The next morning in the mailbox was a letter that I was successfully registered as a developer. Then I went to iTunes Connect, clicked the button to request the status of the seller, filled out bank details and tax data (just noted that I was not from the USA) and found out the next day that the status of the seller was approved and I could publish paid applications. So, it took me less than two days to register and get seller status.
Total, if you are not a citizen of Russia
- Windows Phone 7 - you can neither publish nor sell anything.
- Bada - you can sell programs, but advertising programs have very big problems with publishing.
- Android - you can only publish free applications, there are no restrictions on advertising
- iOS - you can publish both free apps with ads and submit programs
PS I did not consider Symbian, because I consider this platform to be dying, but I have to work with promising platforms. And with Blackberry, I have so negative experience that I can only advise her to the enemy.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/119682/
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