According to reports, over the last few hours the Android store went live showing paid applications to some end users in the US.

Viewing paid listings requires an update to the phone firmware. So far, this only seems to have happened to some phones in the US. My phone in the UK hasn’t updated its firmware and is still showing the old store application with just free listings.

Playing with the Android Market developer console shows that it would not be possible to price my already free applications. This is expected because the Android Market T&Cs state that free applications must always remain free for people who have already downloaded them. Even uploading an update doesn’t allow an application to go from free to paid. Instead, it’s necessary to create a new application if you want to create a paid updated version of your free application.

One consequence of this is that developers who have built up good comments and ratings will lose these when they go from free to paid.

Incidentally, I don’t plan on converting my Android applications to paid. They will always remain free.

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This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 9:59 am and is filed under Mobile, Android. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.