| page.title=Distribution Control |
| page.metaDescription=Reach the users you want, whenever you want. |
| |
| @jd:body |
| |
| <p>Deliver your apps to the users you want, on the devices you want, on <em>your</em> schedule. </p> |
| |
| <h2 id="instant">Instant publishing, instant updates</h2> |
| |
| <p>On Google Play, you can publish your products to customers instantly. Just |
| upload and configure your product in the <span style="font-weight:500;">Google Play Android Developer Console</span> |
| and press the Publish button—your app appears in the store listings within |
| hours, not weeks.</p> |
| |
| <p>Once your app is published, you can update it as often as you want. You can |
| change prices, configuration, and distribution options at any time through the |
| Google Play Android Developer Console, without needing to update your app |
| binary.</p> |
| |
| <p>Later, as you add features or address code issues, you can publish an updated |
| binary at any time. Google Play makes the new version available immediately and |
| notifies existing customers that an update is ready for download. To streamline |
| the rollout across your customer base, Google Play also lets users accept |
| automatic updates of your app, so that your updates are delivered and installed |
| as soon as you publish them.</p> |
| |
| <h2>Reaching the customers you want</h2> |
| |
| <p>Google Play does more than connect your app with users—it helps you |
| reach the broadest possible distribution across the Android ecosystem, while |
| making sure that your app is only available to the audience that you want to |
| reach.</p> |
| |
| <div style="float:right;margin-left:18px;border:1px solid #DDD;margin:1.5em;"> |
| <img src="{@docRoot}images/gp-dc-countries.png" style="width:400px;padding:4px;margin-bottom:0;"> |
| </div> |
| |
| <h3 id="geotargeting">Geographic targeting</h3> |
| |
| <p>You can use controls in the Google Play Android Developer Console to easily |
| manage the geographic distribution of your apps, without any changes in your |
| application binary. You can specify which countries and territories you want to |
| distribute to, and even which carriers (for some countries). </p> |
| |
| <p>When users visit the store, Google Play makes sure that they are in one of |
| your targeted countries before downloading your app. You can change your country |
| and carrier targeting at any time just by saving changes in the Google Play |
| Android Developer Console</p> |
| |
| <div style="float:right;margin-left:18px;border:1px solid #DDD;margin:1.5em;"> |
| <img src="{@docRoot}images/gp-supported-dev-requirements.png" |
| style="width:400px;padding:4px;margin-bottom:0;"> |
| </div> |
| |
| <h3 id="captargeting">Capabilities targeting</h3> |
| |
| <p>Google Play also lets you control distribution according to device features |
| or capabilities that your app depends on. There are several types of |
| dependencies that the app can define in its manifest, such as hardware features, |
| OpenGL texture compression formats, libraries, Android platform versions, and |
| others.</p> |
| |
| <p>When you upload your app, Google Play reads the dependencies and sets up any |
| necessary distribution rules. For technical information about declaring |
| dependencies, read <a href="{@docRoot}guide/google/play/filters.html">Filters on |
| Google Play</a>. </p> |
| |
| <p>For pinpoint control over distribution, Google Play lets you see all of the |
| devices your app is available to based on its dependencies (if any). From the |
| Google Play Android Developer Console, you can list the supported devices and |
| even exclude specific devices if needed.</p> |
| |
| <h2 id="stats">Statistics for analyzing installs</h2> |
| |
| <p>Once you’ve published your app, Google Play makes it easy to see how it’s |
| doing. The Google Play Android Developer Console gives you access to a variety |
| of anonymized metrics that show your app’s installation performance measured by |
| unique users and unique devices, across a variety of different dimensions such |
| as country, Android version, device, country, carrier, and app version.</p> |
| |
| <div style="border:1px solid #DDD;margin:1.5em;margin-left:8%;width:608px"> |
| <img src="{@docRoot}images/gp-dc-stats-mini.png" |
| style="width:600px;padding:4px;margin-bottom:0;"> |
| </div> |
| <p>You can also view your installation data on timeline charts, for all metrics and |
| dimensions. At a glance, these charts highlight your app’s installation peaks |
| and longer-term trends, which you can correlate to promotions, app improvements, |
| or other factors. You can even focus in on data inside a dimension by |
| highlighting specific data points (such as individual platform versions or |
| languages) on the timeline.</p> |
| |
| <p>So that you can “take your data with you”, you can download all of your |
| installation data as a CSV file for viewing in the business program of your |
| choice.</p> |
| |
| |
| <h2 id="advanced">Advanced delivery options</h2> |
| |
| <p>Google Play offers convenient options for managing how your apps are |
| delivered to users.</p> |
| |
| <p>In most cases, it’s easy to create an app that supports all of your targeted |
| screen sizes and platform versions from a single APK. Distributing a single APK |
| to all of your users is a highly recommended approach, because it’s the easiest |
| way to manage and maintain the app. If you need to deliver a different APK to |
| devices, Google Play provides a way to do that. </p> |
| |
| <p>An option called Multiple APK support lets you create multiple APK packages |
| that use the same package name but differ in their OpenGL texture compression |
| formats, screen-size support, or Android platform versions supported. You can |
| upload all of the APKs to Google Play under a single product listing and Google |
| Play selects the best APK to deliver to users, based on the characteristics of |
| their devices. </p> |
| |
| <p>The APK Expansion Files option lets you upload up to two secondary downloads |
| for each published APK, including multiple APKs. Each of the two expansion files |
| can be up to 2GB each and can contain any type of code or assets. When you |
| upload the expansion files, Google Play hosts them for free and handles the |
| download of the files as part of the normal APK installation.</p> |
| |
| <h2 id="licensing">Protecting your App</h2> |
| |
| <p>To help you protect your application against piracy, Google Play offers a |
| licensing service that you can implement in your app. It’s a network-based |
| service that lets an application query a trusted Google Play licensing server to |
| determine whether the application is licensed to the current device user.</p> |