The headline does sound a bit like she sells sea shells on the sea shore… I admit. But there’s more to it than just the tongue twister element. China, as you know, is famous for the Great Wall. But besides that, there’s another wall that’s been making news of late: the Great Firewall of China. Now, you’re probably already aware of that. If you’re not, here’s what it is all about: the government in the Far East land of China chooses to exercise complete control over what content is consumed by fellow nationites. This means that there’s heavy censorship, and that often translates to a lot of services, including Google’s, being unavailable in China.
Until now, this also meant that Chinese app developers couldn’t publish paid apps on the Play Store. Some popular Chinese apps that have been dominating the Play Store include the likes of WeChat, Go Launcher, etc. Talented developers from the country have missed out on revenue generation for long enough, but their woes have fortunately been heard. This comes a couple of years after Google made it possible for Indian devs to publish paid apps on its application marketplace.
“As part of that continued effort, we’re excited to announce merchant support in China, enabling local developers to export and sell their apps to Google Play users in more than 130 countries. Chinese developers can now offer both free and paid applications through various monetization models, including in-app purchasing and subscriptions. For revenue generated on Google Play, developers will receive payment to their Chinese bank accounts via USD wire transfers,” adds Google in its announcement.
This comes right in the wake of reports suggesting that Google would finally launch the Play Store for Chinese citizens. Because of the lack of availability of the Play Store in China, every other phone manufacturer takes a shy at outing its own version of the App Market. This results in a highly fragmented experience for both users and developers, and an official launch of the Google Play Store will do more good than bad in this case.