Carrier Billing and its Impact

Wih the newly declared Carrier Billing initiative, Google seems to be intending to offload Android Market apps billing to the wireless providers.

What impact will this have on the users, the Android developers and the wireless providers themselves? The users will stand to benefit from this arrangement as this will allow users in countries without access to paid apps in the Android Market at the moment to install their apps via Android market instead of via other sources. There are many ways to gain access to outstanding apps such as via Mobihand.com but nothing beats having the convenience of accessing an online shop via an application and installing the application program directly to your Android.

Android developers will welcome the change . Although the current Android Market payment system, needing a Google Checkout account, is similar to the Apple App Store system, Google Checkout has not been embraced by Android users the way iTunes has been adopted by iPhone users. The opposition to the acceptance of Google Checkout seems to be that most users find it quite tiresome to go through a few steps before being able to finish the transaction and download the app. It also makes impulse buying that much harder ! This has definitely led to less than marvelous app sales for the Android Market and thus lesser involvement in Android Apps developments.

With carrier billing, not only can users buy applications programmes with just a click, but they will only be able to see a record of that purchase until they get their bills at the end of the month. Well, this might produce some sadness at the end of the month for the users but to the developers, this is just so much better for their business.

The wireless providers themselves will also benefit by getting to play middleman and maybe getting a part of the app revenue pie. If wireless carriers can share the revenue from app sales, which they are not able to at the moment with Apple, it gives the wireless carriers very potent bonuses to promote Android smartphones much more aggressively and help drive sales of Android Market apps. Now, all these are done without Google having to invest its own money in marketing the Android Market, with the added benefits of outsourcing of Android Market billing.

 

There are many possible downsides to this initiativethough.

Impulse buying :.
Without the added measure of logging in or confirming payment options, users might buy apps unknowingly , or without being consciously aware of the prices.

Security Concerns :
It is also possible that unscrupulous developers, phishing, or malware attempts could lead to undesired apps being billed to the account without the user’s authorization .

No more freebies?
One of the reasons that the Android Market has expanded to this degree is because of its free applications. We discovered a few weeks ago that the Android Market had 70,000 apps, and we know that 57 percent of them are free. With carrier billing coming into the picture, will we be seeing an influx of paid application programs and lesser freebies?

However , Android users stand to benefit from a stronger developer community and a more exciting market , filled with high quality applications of both the free and premium versions. Users will just need to be careful of what they click and the costs, and pay special attention to errant charges when the bill comes.

By the end of Aug 2010, we should begin to see this coming into play

 

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