Possible Market issues when increasing minSdkVersion

Question

my app is currently compatible with Cupcake and up. That is: minSdkVersion is set to 3 in the manifest.

For some technical reasons I am thinking about breaking compatibility with Cupcake, by setting minSdkVersion to 4.

But I have quite a few existing users who either downloaded the lite version or purchased my app, and who are running Cupcake.

What will happen to them on the Android Market? Will they still be able to uninstall and reinstall the version which was compatible with Cupcake? Or does the market wipes old versions, so that they will be unable to reinstall in case they need to?

Any other possible problems?

I'm especially interested in feedback from developers who have already done that. In my experience, you can't really make theoretical assumptions about the Market.

Answer 1

They will be unable to install the old version if they ever uninstall. It should never appear in their list of apps or be found via search if you change to minSdkVersion 4.