Android Forums - View Single Post - Missing apps problem found but not yet solved...

PGR · November 22nd, 2009, 08:47 AM

I personally feel that your course of action (call HTC and maybe Google too) is bass ackwards. Google is shooting themselves in the foot and they've got the most to loose when it comes to the entire Android concept. This goes well beyond us being able to access Android apps. It could be the beginning of the end of Android if Google doesn't get it's head out of it's butt.

Google has treated their Android Marketplace like an afterthought or necessary evil from the very beginning and it's not getting any better. Now software developers are abandoning the Android platform in droves. One example was pointed out by Reuters recently when they quoted the Finance Director of Gameloft:

"We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others," Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said at an investor conference. Rochefort said the company has cut back on investment mostly due to weaknesses of Android's application store. "It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue," Rochefort said.

This is but one single example of a widespread and growing theme I've seen in the mainstream media and tech forums and it's snowballing quickly. HTC may play a role in this most recent Marketplace debacle but they're basically victims too when it comes to the big picture. I wouldn't be even slightly surprised to learn that HTC is getting little or no cooperation from Google when it comes to solving this mess.

The bottom line is we definitely need to beat the drums and beat them loudly, but it would be a big mistake not to focus our primary efforts on Google instead of HTC. And among other things, don't ever miss an opportunity to complain about the fact that we can't even browse the Marketplace app library from our desktop computers.

Pete