Android Market buying same app multiple times for a family

[MoeDaddy]

The one issue I have with Adroid Market over Itunes is that you have to purchase ea app for ea phone in your family whereas with itunes you can put a single purchased app on multiple iphones without paying again for ea install. It's not a huge deal but in a large family this could add up pretty quick. A $3 app on itunes is still $3 on 4 iphones but is $12 on 4 android phones. I'd have hoped that thru google checkout there could be a way to link multiple phones to the same account but no luck.

Anyway, not that it's a huge deal just a bit of a disapointment. I love the droid and so does my daughter, she came from and iphone and still has the ipod touch.

[New2u]

Yeah i hadn't even thought of that before. Your definitely right though, if not free for the other phones at least maybe like a 50% discount for the other phones on your account or something.

[Malvado]

wow thanks for bringin it up...maybe a android developer will look at this and consider adding that option

[SoftwareForMe.com]

I have an opinion and a couple facts to share.

First, I'm not quite sure what to think of "one purchase per family." My family size is >1, so I clearly understand the advantages, but, I would assume that prices are increased to cover the sales volume difference.

Imagine that car manufacturers decided to do this, because it made good PR; if you buy a Honda, your partner gets one too for free. Can you ever imagine this happening? If it did, the price of Honda's would have to go up to compensate.

So, I would hope the average price of Android apps would be lower, if this were the case. (I actually have no idea about whether they are or not).

Nonetheless, there is a way to get this same 'sharing' with Android.

Google ties your 'ownership' of an application to your Google Checkout account, and as most of you know, it doesn't limit your downloads. Once you buy an app, you can uninstall/reinstall as many times as you like.

So, if you want one purchase to be shared by many people, simply use the same Google checkout account on each of the phones; once an app is purchased by one, all will be able to download it at no additional cost.

It seems a fairly elegant way to do this; you're likely to be willing to share an account with your husband/wife, but not with the hacker kid down the street.

Cheers!

SoftwareForMe.com
Makers of PhoneMyPC,
& Imagine Multi-Touch

[MoeDaddy]

SoftwareForMe.com,

Well I understand what you are saying but if you look at reports on app store/market comparisons the prices for android and iphone apps are about the same on avg. The problem is those numbers are not really accurate if one purchase can go on multiple phones. These comparisons also show that both apps store prices are lower than the competition, i.e. blackberry/palm/WinMob etc… so that is a definite plus for us both.

As for your analogy it isn't quite the same but anyway it doesn't matter because the biggest app store on the block does it this way and like it or not they are the example and thus to many the rule.

As for the google checkout, well yes it uses google checkout but it is tied to the main gmail account on the phone so mine would have my gmail, my daughters her gmail, my wife hers... etc... and then it asks for a CC at checkout and ties that to the phones gmail account. It doesn't let me log in on my google checkout on my daughters phone.

Again I'm not that upset by it it's just that it is one negative compared to itunes app store and I'm sure it is a issue to some. I love my droid and am happy with the apps and the prices but I do know friends have mentioned it when comparing the 2. Matter of fact my daughter even asked me the same thing pointing out it's that way on itunes and since she lives on a budget (how much $ I give her ) she would love to not have to pay again for apps I already bought.

[LordKastle]

It is basically done this way for piracy concerns. What may seem like an innocent idea would turn in to rampid piracy of software, apps and games.

Question then..
Say I have two phones linked to the same Gmail. This enables us to share the same apps but then sometime down the line the person changes the GMAIL. I assume all the apps will be lost if the phone was reset?

[SoftwareForMe.com]

Interesting thoughts, MoeDaddy. I assumed the Checkout account and the GMail account were separate, but linked, and that you could link the Checkout account to your family's Gmail. Evidently, this was a bad assumption.

@LordKastle,
I believe your assumption is correct.

If developers wanted to support this sort of sharing, how might they do it?

SoftwareForMe.com
Makers of PhoneMyPC & Imagine Multi-Touch

[MoeDaddy]

I assumed the same about google checkout being separate until I got the phone. I think they do it this way for simplicity's sake. This is all fine and good but it leaves me with little control if my card is the one on all accounts unless I have access to ea phone. With the amazon mp3 store my daughter uses my login info but I can always go in and change the password if she buys too much stuff or remove the credit card. I can't do that to her phone unless I have it in my hands and I'm not sure if you can even do it or how to do it. Now for me this isn't a problem because if I told her she was at her monthly limit she would stop buying but that may not be the case for everyone. Anyway there should be another mechanism for google checkout since it requires a credit/debit card and many kids use their parents and thus with this the parents have zero control.

[LordKastle]

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