Yes, finally Indian developers can sell their paid apps on Google’s Play Store in India and at the same time the customers can make payments in local currency. And this is not a mistake this time, like the one which happened in the last month when Google mistakenly added India to its paid app list and then removed them in 24 hours without any explanation, leading to huge disappointment among Indian developers.
The move comes after the India has leapfrogged many other markets to become the fourth largest market for downloads worldwide. This after India showed around 500% Y-o-Y growth for Android in 2011.
Though there are no official figures on the sales and activations in India, it’s safe to assume the numbers to be pretty huge with OEM players like Samsung making it huge and capturing more than 50% of the Indian market on the back of Android devices. Also the presence of Android in all price segments starting as low as Rs. 5,000 makes it pretty attractive for the masses in India.
Hence it is makes sense to enable the local currency payment for its users in India which will only spur the growth of the platform and the app sales here. Also the developers will be able to enjoy greater returns with in-app monetization and subscription base sales. And it’s not only India, the developers will also have the benefit of a global exposure of their apps to the hundreds of millions of Android users worldwide and sell apps in their local currency as well.
This is an important move considering the fact that Asus’ Nexus 7 tablet is set to hit the Indian shores next month. India is one of the fastest growing markets for smartphones and Google seems to have taken note of the same and is working on tightening its grip on it before Apple makes it move to launch the new iPhone 5 with two retailers in India. It will be interesting to see what other moves Apple makes as it lags far behind in the Indian market with less than a percent in market share.
