About a year ago, Apple debuted in-app subscriptions on its App Store - now Google is following suit with the introduction of in-app subscription support on the Play Store. Developers can take advantage of this system very easily, by simply adding a subscription option to their apps with a price and billing period (subscriptions will show up for users in their Play Store under a new category). Google takes care of the rest - all subscriptions are auto-renewing, and can be managed by users through the Play Store interface.
Bigger developers can utilize an HTTP support API to hook in-app subscriptions into backend enterprise servers for validation and cancellation (read: DRM), as well as to make multi-platform subscriptions easier to manage. For example, buying a subscription to a publisher's entire suite of services on a variety of apps through a single in-app purchase could be accomplished without the need for messy logins - download another one of the publisher's apps that grants access to premium features through the subscription, and it just works.
One of the first developers taking advantage of the HTTP API will be GluMobile, in the form of an in-game currency subscription (disgusting, I know) that can be used across all of the company's titles, without the need for a 3rd-party login or account management service. Nifty.
To learn more about in-app subscriptions, check out this Android Developer Blog Post.
Android Developer Blog
Source: NDPFor Q1 2012, Motorola managed to boost its smartphone sales year over year by 25%, to 5.1 million handsets, most of them sold in the US and China. Obviously, this hasn't been enough to keep up with the Joneses. Samsung, especially, has seen massive growth in the past year. But let's rewind for a moment.When Google announced its acquisition of Motorola back in August, some people (rightly) asked the big question: "Why?" The company certainly wasn't doing well (and has only lost market share since), and Google seemingly had it good letting its various manufacturer partners vie for market share, resulting in an Android-dominated smartphone ecosystem.Then, it came out that things were, well, complicated. Patents were one of the major concerns Google actually expressed after the purchase - Larry Page himself said that "anticompetitive" behavior from the likes of Microsoft and Apple necessitated purchasing MMI to protect Android against those who would seek to use Moto's IP against the platform. Prior to the acquisition, one of Moto's biggest shareholders was prodding the board into selling off the company's patent portfolio piecemeal to give the firm additional liquidity. Suddenly, hindsight!Who would have bought these patents? Microsoft. RIM. Apple. Basically, anyone with an interest in using them against Google and its partners. Just like they did with the Nortel patents. In fact, Microsoft was apparently interested in just buying Motorola altogether.But given Mr. Icahn's very public endorsement of Moto selling off its IP - why didn't Google just pursue that route? It did, but Motorola didn't want to play ball. Motorola would have gotten a raw deal selling off its patents to Google, and while it may have been able to assert immunity from infringing them (a corporate "lifetime," non-transferable license), the patents were worth more to Moto in an offensive capacity. There's some truth to this - settling big patent lawsuits depends on the ability of both parties to assert infringement, meaning both parties have to own patents they can sue on. If Moto sold off its portfolio, it'd be a sitting duck for the likes of Apple and Microsoft.It might, then, have been the more intelligent choice in the mind of CEO Sanjay Jha to just tell Google "buy us, or we'll sell to someone else." Jha admitted to being open to the idea of producing Windows Phone hardware, but clearly wanted the company to have other options (read: Android) on the table. But given Motorola's increasingly poor fiscal performance, it's likely the company's major shareholders were starting to look at more drastic measures to counteract the downturn (or cash out), such as the aforementioned IP sale.But this explanation takes only one dimension of the buyout into account - why would Google, rather than attempt to hash out an IP deal, or wait for Jha to be ousted, take on a multi-billion dollar company (one not making a profit, mind you) just to get its intellectual property?That's when the rumors that Google was planning to flip Motorola's hardware business to Huawei started - a move that, as Forbes pointed out, sounds "logical." And logical it is - Google has never run a hardware company (though it does build some its own networking equipment), hell, it doesn't even really have any experience "selling" anything to consumers.Considering Motorola's active presence in China, and Huawei's desire to have a larger US footprint, such a deal would make perfect sense. Of course, the federal government might have something to say about that - it has been notoriously suspicious of the Chinese firm, and basically prevented it from engaging in network hardware contracts in the US out of security concerns. Australia outright banned Huawei from bidding on a major network project in the country.It seems unlikely that the FTC would be able to ignore the political pressure associated with a large, state-supported (Huawei receives loans with no or almost no interest from the Chinese government) Chinese corporation attempting to buy an iconic American brand. While logical, the idea of Google getting such a deal through regulatory hurdles seems almost insurmountable, if not a case of explicit bad faith in its purchase of Moto in the first place. It's also just not going to happen, based on new information - Google is making moves, restructuring Moto's management and products in big ways. There's no reason at this point to think Google isn't in this for the long play.So, did Google really do it just for the patents? That's a bit like buying a foreclosed estate for the antique furniture and jewelry inside. Is it valuable, even unique? Sure. Is it worth buying real estate just to get your hands on it? Probably not. Does that mean this deal was cold, calculating, and well-thought-out, then? Not necessarily. In fact, the story of the deal's conception makes it sound like a reactive impulse-buy. It took Google and Motorola five days to hash out the terms, and the deal was conducted at the behest of Andy Rubin (after Google lost out on the Nortel patents), by Larry Page and Sanjay Jha personally. Rubin's first suggestion, apparently, was simply to buy Moto's patents, but Jha said no, and convinced Page to go for the "whole kit and kaboodle." Clearly, bigger things were afoot.Motorola Mobility is a major corporation - with over 20,000 employees working in 92 large facilities (and many smaller ones) in 97 countries. That kind of capital investment doesn't go away overnight, and it doesn't stop costing money just because Andy Rubin doesn't care about it. "Firewall" or not, Google has to do something with Motorola's hardware business, and it's going to have to get its hands dirty doing it. Right now, Motorola isn't turning a profit - and that must scare the bejesus out of Google's investors. The company may be generating well over $10 billion in revenue a year, but the bigger they are, the harder they fall - a sudden downturn in Moto's numbers could become a major financial liability for Google.To say this $12 billion decision was a quick and dirty IP protection scheme does a disservice to the fact that Larry Page has shown he has big ideas for Google - ones that he isn't afraid to put in motion. To say that IP was anything but the reason the deal was put into motion in the first place is naïve; clearly, that's how this all got started. Google needed, or really wanted, those patents - but buying the whole of Motorola Mobility presented a new and interesting option for the company, and probably at a bargain-basement price, considering the separate value of the IP already at stake, as well as Motorola's financial state.No doubt, Andy Rubin is the big cheese when it comes to all things Android development-related at Google, but by no means is he the man with the last word on all decisions related to it. Larry Page has made it very clear he's willing to kick ass and take names to keep Google relevant - often whether people seem to like it or not. Google+ is the most aggressively pushed product in the company's history - Google seems to almost flat out ignore the complaints of users that say the service has become too difficult to separate from products like Gmail and Search.The acquisition of Motorola is yet another radical move by the new CEO, and it would be silly to believe that Page made the decision merely because of Rubin's growing concern over patents. And yet, that seems to be what so many people were suggesting, at least until Google spoke up in the past week.While Page's statement on the importance of "anticompetitive" behavior from Apple and Microsoft, and therefore of the IP portfolio it acquired as part of the deal, would have supported such a conclusion, almost everything else we've heard to date does not. Page himself said at a town-hall meeting with Moto employees last year basically the exact opposite:
What would be better than a new Nexus phone each year? How about several Nexus devices, built by multiple manufacturers? According to the WSJ (and their confidential sources) that will become a reality in the near future. According to the Journal, Google will be working with as many as five device manufacturers to build Android lead devices, which they can then sell directly to consumers in the U.S., Europe, and Asia from their online device store. This is Google's way of exerting a modicum of control over Android, without stepping on the open-source toes at its roots. Right now you can walk into your carrier store and buy a great phone that runs an Android-based operating system like Sense 4, or the new TouchWiz, complete with full carrier support and customer service. With this news it sounds like those of us that aren't concerned with carrier subsidies or support may be able to shop at our own Android store. It's an answer that many of us have been looking for.The devices are expected to run Jellybean, be completely SIM unlocked, and available near Thanksgiving. Start saving your pennies. I think this is a long time coming. It sounds like what Google was trying to do in 2010 with the Nexus One, but back then they didn't have the foothold (or is it stranglehold?) on customer mind-share that they do now. Two years later, and I'll wager a good many of us would jump on this opportunity, including some that didn't when the Nexus One was released.If Google wants to pull this off, they will need to offer quality hardware at a reasonable price (I'm thinking under $500 per unit), and convince customers in the U.S. to switch away from Verizon and Sprint to GSM carriers. If they can manage this, they will have finally changed the mobile world, like they wanted to do all along. They certainly have my support.Source: WSJ
Looks like Google Wallet running on any rooted Android device is getting a little compromised. . Now although the PIN is encrypted, it would take someone who has found your phone to run a program to crack the PIN, which is pretty easily done with the right program. This is demonstrated in the video below.
