How to distribute updates to users of pre-installed paid Android App?

Question

I wrote a small Android app. It is published on Google Play as two distinct versions

• a free demo version with limited features
• and the paid version without limitations

Now I have been approached by the distributor of a tablet who wants to pre-install my app on his device. Obviously, I want the owners of his product to benefit from later updates for my app.

Is there a way to pre-install the paid app on the device and still allow free updates to the app?

Thanks!

Answer 1

The pre-installed app has to be free. This comes verbatim from the Google Play Support site:

Unpublished Apps

Existing app users will still be able to receive app updates, even if you unpublish your app. If you don't want new users to find and download your app but still want to provide updates to your existing users, set your app to Unpublished in the Developer Console.

Updating system apps

The user’s system apps (including any pre-loaded apps) are shown in the My Apps section of the user's device in the Google Play store as soon as an application with the same package name is uploaded to the Google Play Developer Console, even if the application is unpublished.

Google Play can manage updates to preloaded applications, provided the following conditions are met:

• The preloaded app needs to be in the system partition
• The preloaded app needs to be free
• The preloaded app needs to be signed with the same signature as the app published in Google Play
• The Package Name of the preloaded and updated app needs to be the same
• The Version Code of the updated app needs to be greater than that of the preloaded app

Answer 2

This should happen automatically as long as you use the same signing key and package name.

You can test this and verify by doing the following:

1. Install the .apk file that you will be providing to the distributor (lets call this 2.0).
2. Now upload 2.1 to Google Play (same signing key and package name)
3. When the user's automatic update checking runs, or when the user opens the package in Google Play, the update will be offered and work great.

The only case I have seen where this doesn't work is with cross-licensing. For example, if I license an App through the Amazon appstore, I will see updates in Google Play, but attempting to update will give me a "not paid" or "buy now" error.