Ever since it first came out, we’ve been big proponents of Android. Excited by the platform, the device and the opportunities to create great apps, we rolled our sleeves up and dug into the Android sdk. We found even though it was limiting it was quite well thought out. We developed a couple of apps and waited anxiously for the Android Market to open. Our first few apps received a lackluster response in terms of sales and reviews. Undeterred, we finally stumbled upon an idea which flourished and that has been liked by many called Open Gesture. We were able to sign up quite a few Beta testers and had a pretty satisfying round of testing.

So when time came to launch it into the Android market we were reluctant. Reluctant for a lot of reasons:

1. Lack of frequent, useful updates: The Android market is going to be almost one year old. And the number of updates have been made to it ever since? Zero (I mean significant changes that enhance user experience)

2. Limitation to showcase -  All you have to show your potential user is a description that is limited to 238 characters. No screen shots, no long description, no changelog. Yes you can put a link to your site but that is just too cumbersome for users. In our experience none of the users bother clicking on a link in the description.

3. Piracy. Yes as software developers this is something that we have to get used to. We are not whining but Google definitely didn’t try hard to prevent piracy.

Now in the spirit of being open Android has made it very easy for you to pass around apps and install them. All you need is an “APK” file which akin to that of an “EXE” on Windows and you can install it on your device. For Beta testing this is fantastic, however, when you have a paid app on the market which claims to have “copy protection” you expect it to work. The minute Open Gesture went live it got pirated and we had twice as many people install the pirated version than the ones that actually purchased a copy.

4. So you think the Android Market is unfriendly from the end-user side of things? Well, let’s see when we decided to launch a free version of Open Gesture and at the same time provide an update to the pro version. The way things are cached in their session it bungled up the Pro with Lite and made both of them FREE.

And guess what, once an app is Free on the Android market you cannot switch it back to paid. So how do we fix this? We can’t!?! Aside from posting to a forum there is no other mechanism of support. No number to call, no email. Nobody that seems like they can come forward and help. The only other solution is to repackage the app and upload it again and that is what we ended up doing, we lost all our comments, ratings and not to mention pissed off customers.

We know what it is like to put our best face forward and get critized but the Android Market has been out for nearly a year and with no updates it feels like the neglected child that nobody cares about.