As many paid apps MobileKnox contains two pieces of apps: Firstly, the freely available app which provides all features (e.g., create and securely save entries) including the premium ones (e.g, synchronization) which are only available for free during a seven days trial period. This app is called “MobileKnox” in the application stores. Secondly, an app that can only be downloaded from the application stores if you pay 1.99€ plus taxes. This app is called “MobileKnox Premium Key” and activates the premium features of MobileKnox forever. The “MobileKnox” app is available in many different application stores:
- Handster (www.handster.com)
- AppLibs (www.applibs.com)
- AndAppStore (www.andappstore.com)
- Android Market (www.android.com/market)
- AndroidPit (www.androidpit.com)
- SlideME (www.slideme.org)
- AndSpot (www.andspot.com)
- GetJar (www.getjar.com)
- Camangi (www.camangimarket.com)
- Appoke (www.appoke.com)
- Amazon AppStore (developer.amazon.com)
Unfortunately, the “MobileKnox Premium Key” app cannot be downloaded from most of these application stores. The reason is that only a few of these application stores offer a licencing service that allows “MobileKnox Premium Key” to verify if a particular user already paid for the app. Without such a service it is easy for crackers to download the “MobileKnox Premium Key” and crack the app so that it can be made available to everybody for free. This would negatively affect my revenue streams which means I do not have the resources to spend more time on improving MobileKnox. So far, the following application stores offer a licencing service:
- AndAppStore
- Android Market
- AndroidPit
- SlideME
- Camangi
AndSpot and Appoke are working on licensing services but it is unclear when it will be available. The AndroidPit licensing service is build on top of the Android Market. However, the licensing services from the other application stores are different to the Android Market licensing service meaning that application developers have to spend a lot of time to integrate the different services.
Given the different licensing services from the various application stores I already started developing a library that contains all these services. The goal of this endeavor is to provide a single and easy-to-use library that communicates with all the different licensing services.
The rule which licensing service should be selected for querying about a license is derived from the application store client that is installed on the smart-phone. It can be assumed that an app is not licensed from a particular application store if the according application store client is not installed.
Do you want to participate in this development? If so just drop me a mail and I will provide you a SVN account to the source code repository.
Best regards,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 14:16 2011-01-09 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)