US operator Sprint is the latest to sign up to let its customers pay for Android apps with their phone bills.
Google has announced that Sprint is now offering direct carrier billing on Android Market, allowing customers to pay for apps using their phone bills rather than the Google Checkout system.
"We've begun a phased roll-out of the service that will reach all users in the next few days," explains Android developer ecosystem boss Eric Chu in a blog post. "When complete, Android users on the Sprint network will be able to charge their Android Market purchases to their Sprint mobile bill with only a few clicks."
Sprint joins US rivals T-Mobile and AT&T, who both introduced direct billing for Android last year. Meanwhile, the three main Japanese operators - NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank - have all recently added the feature too.
These deals are important for Google, which has been regularly criticised by developers for not doing more to encourage Android users to buy apps rather than just download them for free.
Carrier billing makes the purchase process that little bit more frictionless, and could help spur more paid downloads in markets where it is introduced. The moves come after Google's separate recent introduction of in-app purchases on the Android platform.
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I believe that both consumers and app developers will benefit from this innovation of being able to pay for apps through your phone bill. Firstly, app developers should see this billing process help encourage the purchase of their applications as it not only makes it painless but also makes it easier for the user to trust that their credit card information will not be put into the wrong hands. Secondly, chances are that some users will even purchase apps more frequently due to the simple fact that they will probably forget which apps they purchased since they will not see the money come out of their wallets immediately and will be billed for it later.
Glen Suh
www.tapit.com
Glen Suh Nov 22nd 2011 at 1:15AM
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