Android Market

One of our readers installed an app which didn’t work for him and lost money. Android market has a return  policy, if you uninstall a paid app within 24 hours you will get your money back.

Android Market Refund Policy

Refund policy
You have 24 hours from the time of purchase (not download) to return an application purchased through Android Market for a full refund. You may only return a given application once; if you subsequently purchase the same app again, you may not return it a second time.

How to return an app:
From Market, visit the My Downloads page, and select the application you’d like to return.

• Applications that are eligible for return are marked with a ‘Uninstall & Refund’ button. Please note that after the 24-hour return period has expired, all sales are final.
• After 24 hours, selecting the “Uninstall” button will simply remove the application from your device. More about uninstalling purchased applications.

If you’re unsatisfied with an application after 24 hours, we recommend contacting the developer directly. Learn more about refunds.

How to avoid losing  money on bad Android paid apps

The best way to avoid losing money on paid apps is to install the limited edition first. Most paid apps come with free limited edition. You should install and play with the free edition before purchasing the paid edition.

Contact the developer

If you are having problems with an app you should contact the developer for help or information. Some developers will refund your money after 24 hours, but you will be at their mercies.

Locate Refund

When the seller refunds your order, your Google Checkout account should immediately reflect this change. Cancelled orders are automatically refunded.

You can verify the refund has been finalized in your Google Checkout account. After an order is refunded, you may notice a pending authorization on your credit/debit card. The pending authorization will expire from your account in 1 to 14 business days. Contact your bank for details.

I hope this help a bit. Continue to download, Android nation!

Android Market

We as android fans can hate Apple but on second thought we have to thank Steve Jobs and the Apple family. The App Store is a phenomenon in a one-person software company that has gone to make over “$250, 000 in a few month”. Many software developers have been able to quit their day job after developing a hit app that got millions of download. Well, the android market is still small and the number of android phones is still considerable smaller than iPhones but the app gold rush is starting to enter the android market.

Techcrunch reports that Edward Kim the marker of “Car Locator” is now making around $13,000 on the app.

Kim writes that the free version of the application has been downloaded around 70,000 times, while the paid application has been downloaded 6,590 times. The price was initially $1.99, but he moved it up to $3.99 (he notes that despite doubling the price, the number of downloads didn’t decrease too much).

So what was Kim’s secret to success? Well, a big part of it seems to have come from the fact that Car Locator is now a featured app on Android Market, which means Google more prominently displays it to users than ‘normal’ applications. Getting featured increased the app’s revenue by over four fold. This probably comes as bittersweet news to developers (you can’t exactly count on being featured by Google), but Kim says that he’s ranked between 100 and 200th place in the Market’s ‘Paid’ category, which means that there are probably at least 100 other applications seeing similar success.  Android Market is still far behind the App Store in many respects (except for openness), but it looks like it’s finally starting to mature.

Kim is very optimistic about the future of the platform, telling me “Android appears to have grown enough that developers can make some money off of it, but there’s not SO many developers that you’ll never get noticed.”

Car locator

Android is spreading like wild fire, so success stories like this will only get better.