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I am trying to understand the Android Application Licensing. I read most of the documentation on the android website about this subject, but I'm still confused.

Here is my dilema:

I create an Android app and I'm deciding whether I want to release it as a paid app or in-app billing. Now, I'm currently looking into releasing the app as paid. My understanding is that I can submit the app to android google play ( or market) as paid and specify the price of the app and that's it.

However, I see that google provides the Application Licensing service which seems to allow Google to control a list of users who purchase the app and verify that the user has indeed paid for the app. Otherwise prevent users who have illegally installed the paid app on their devices if they didn't purchased it. Please correct me if I'm wrong so far. Now, it seems that when the application is first executed, it will use Google's application licensing to check whether the user is authenticated. What will happen if the user does not have internet connectivity? Will the app still be able to launch or will the app require internet connectivity in order to run every time?

Thank you Andy

CommonsWare
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David
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1 Answers1

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Of course checking the license need internet connectivity.Android is doing this using the google play services client in your device. But the decision making on allowing user access is given to us.We can implement the Policy interface, There we get two methods, processServerResponse() and allowAccess(). processServerResponse(), lets us to preprocess the response we got from licensing server like storing the licensing information locally etc. allowAccess() decides whether to grant the user access to the application.In this method we can decide whether to allow the user access in case of no internet connectivity.(some policy like, user can gain access 5 times without internet connection etc.)

nikvs
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  • Ok, that's the information I was looking for. So, it is not a bad idea to go this route if you want to make sure your app does not get copied and installed by users who didn't purchased it. Nikvs, is there a sample project that you know of that has implemented what you described? thx – David Dec 27 '13 at 17:40