The tempting feature is available immediately for Android developers, in-app subscriptions will enable users to pay for monthly or annual subscriptions directly within their apps. And as described by Google, developers will be able to specify the billing and price intervals while Google Play will manage the purchase transactions, Google said in a blog post.
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Game developer Glu, which creates the app Frontline Commando, is among the first to use Google’s in-app subscription feature for Android apps. Image: Google…{japopup type=”image” content=”images/stories/demo/2012/may/google-play-subscriptions-big.png” width=”700″ height=”380″ title=”image” }Click to enlarge…{/japopup}
After unveiling in-app billing a year ago, Google now claims that it has become quite profitable for developers. Now, in addition to stapling a new level of convenience, the move opens the door to added revenue streams and even new types of content through Google Play.
“While making it easy for developers to offer a great purchasing experience, our subscriptions are also designed for flexibility,” wrote Ibrahim Elbouchikhi, product manager of the Google Play team. “Developers can utilize them to monetize premium dynamic content such as journals and magazines, but they can also use them to sell access to bundled products, game levels, music and video content, value-added services, or any other digital content.”
Besides, subscriptions will auto-renew, and Google will notify users via email with each renewal. To cancel, users can visit My Apps in the Google Store app. And with all the brouhaha, this latest announcement could entice magazines and news journals to offer subscriptions to consumers directly through Google Play.
The first apps to take benefits of the in-app subscription feature are expected to arrive in the coming days. And that move is a victory for game developers in particular, said Adam Flanders, the senior vice president of business development at San Francisco-based Glu.
“In-app subscriptions enable us to offer completely new types of products, things that just were not possible before,” Flanders said in a statement. “This is huge win for us and game developers in general.”
Glu Mobile, along-with the roll-out announced its Glu VIP Club on Android, which will run between $4.99 and $9.99 a month, and empower avid mobile gamers access to new content in popular games. The subscription will also offer users bonus Glu Credits, a digital currency that can be used across the company’s games.
Admittedly, according to Flanders, around 3.2 million people play Glu games each month, across both Android and iOS. However, the publicly-traded company does not share user numbers specific to each operating system.
Furthermore, Elbouchikhi mentioned that 23 of the 24 top-grossing apps in Google Play now offer in-app billing, while “the total revenue generated from in-app purchases exceeds revenue from traditional app purchases.”
Others in line to reap the benefits such as Qello, a company that delivers concert video streaming apps for Android, iOS, Google TV and Samsung TVs, is looking to update its Android apps in about the next 48 hours with subscriptions.
“We are a niche business, but being able to offer the same product on both platforms should allow us to pull in people we might not have been able to reach before,” Matthew Carona, Qello’s vice president of product, quoted as saying by Wired. “Subscriptions are a lot easier to deal with than having to make a bunch of smaller in-app purchases every time you want to watch a video.”
In general, Qello has been providing subscriptions through its iOS apps since Apple introduced its corresponding about a year ago. The price on Android or iOS for Qello’s subscription will be similar, $4.99. The apps renders access to about 500 high-definition concert videos and the company is working on bringing about 1,200 more videos to subscribers over the coming months, Carona said.
“Our entire business model is based on subscriptions,” he said. “Being able to offer subscriptions on Android could be a game changer for us.”
Finally, developers tempted with the latest in-app subscriptions are advised to log into the Android dashboard and review the in-app billing documentation. Google suggests that it has already enabled back-end support for devices running Google Play 3.5 or higher and that users can begin buying subscriptions immediately. Further details are available on the Android developer website.