What is the current status of Android app encryption?

Question

If this question sounds broad, it's only because I'm having a shockingly hard time finding what seem like pretty crucial details about the app encryption Google introduced in Jelly Bean.

To be clear, I'm referring to the feature Google mentions in one paragraph at the bottom of this page: http://developer.android.com/distribute/googleplay/about/distribution.html

Sounds great: Paid users download to all their devices like before, but can't share them with thousands of their closest friends. However, it seems that app encryption ran into some issues, as reported, for example, here (http://blog.gsmarena.com/google-disables-jelly-bean-app-encryption-after-issues-with-several-paid-apps/).

That was over a year ago. Presumably Google has fixed the issue, but I haven't seen any followup articles to confirm. And if they fixed it with an OS update, then presumably a particular OS is required for it to work. But the page linked above doesn't say anything about that.

So this leads me to my series of questions:

• Is app encryption currently being used by Google?
• What exact version of the OS is required for it to be used?
• Has it proven effective in combating piracy?
• If using Android app encryption, is the use of the License Verification Library obviated?

Thanks for any light you can shed on this!

Answer 1

The still open bug https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=35962 only refers to the issue in 4.1, it's confirmed as broken in 4.1.1, but marked as fixed in 4.1.2.

Unlike 4.1.1 there are limited reports of it not working in 4.1.2 though I can only find references to the swiftkey app. I know of no open bugs with respect to 4.2 and app encryption.