How to implement yearly subscription on just the Android application itself, and not products within the application

Question

In Android documentation, you can find how to implement subscription billing for the products that you offer for sale within your application. It involves exchanging a number of messages with Google server.

I just want to sell my application itself (not products within it) with subscription. I feel that it would be almost as simple as selling the application for a one-time charge. When after one year the license becomes invalid, the licensing mechanism in the Google server would tell the customer to renew it.

So my question is : do I have to implement the whole in-app billing described in the documentation ? What is the minimum work I have to do to sell an application itself with subscription ? As far as I investigated, this is not obvious or clear. Does someone have more experience ?

Answer 1

Google Play's own selling method itself doesn't allow for subscription style billing. If you want to have a subscription type billing, you must use in app billing, or sell the app through your own website.

The absolute minimum would be to allow the user to download the app for free, or perhaps pay for one year when buying the app itself. After downloading a free app, you must ask the user to pay the first subscription payment. If you charged the user when buying the app, ask for payment after a year.

So in short, yes, you must use in app billing for this.