back to article Motorola pulls out of China, leaves locals behind till of Android shop

Google's hardware arm has shuttered its Chinese Android store, one of the few which lets punters pay for apps, saying its work is done and the competition is too fierce. SHOP4APPS was set up by Motorola in 2010, providing an Android marketplace in a region where Google Play still fears to tread, but Google's absence combined …

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  1. h3

    I cannot see how they could do worse by just opening up the play store to China.

    (If Google treated me as a third class citizen it would be certain I would pirate everything. I would trust free appstore's with paid apps more than totally unknown ones that would have to have access to my financial details. I don't even trust Google but I do trust Amazon(I don't like the Amazon MP3 Store or Appstore and its need for one click don't see why I cannot just do my orders from the website like normal)).

    Maybe there is something they have to do that is easy for Apple but impossible for them.

    (Be certain no apps criticising the new leader of the communist party for example is easy for Apple but Google couldn't do it other than retrospectively.)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So, in summary..

    .. China is not really allowing Google to turn a profit.

    At least they don't blame Chinese spies this time, and just admit they cannot make it work.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: So, in summary..

      A company that copies everyone and releases cheaper versions finds it hard to compete in a market famous for such practises. No surprise there then :)

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Windows

        Re: So, in summary..

        In my time, trolling was serious business.

  3. kurkosdr

    AgainGoogle?

    Someone give those guys at Google an Atlas, so that they can see the US is not the entire world, not even the biggest country in the world

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I don't blame them

    As someone who has lived in the China for over two years, the app stores here are like hopping on to the piratebay in terms of availability. Looking around some of the app stores, you can see people will just scour pirate sites and put it straight in to their own app store if it looks flash; some apks still have the original release group/individual postfixed to the file name.

    As a software developer, the state of play out here is rather sad when trying tro turn a profit; I would honestly avoid it even though it is such a big market unless you plan on giving out your product for free. In the sense of Chinese productions, things are slowly improving though. Right now, they are in the copy everything phase and don't understand half of what they have their hands on.

    Innovation is starting to crawl through though; if you check out some of the social/music apps, they are rather good in terms of user experience and assets. It's very similar with anything in the area of IT here, a place I worked paid an IT shop to have a series of camera's hooked up to an isolated PC and the software seemed to malfunction one day (it phoned home and got shut down).

    I volunteered to fix it but, was told it was on a service contract so no need. When the owner of the IT shop came to fix it, first they tried peddling a line that the motherboard was broken, it took a while to convince my boss it wasn't. Then, it was apparently the whole of Windows becoming corrupt and because of this, the owner spent well over half a day trying to hook up a CD drive to the PC. Finally and inevitably, after setting up everything from scratch, they downloaded a fresh crack and it worked. Overall, they left the computer in a worse state than it was putting a big dent in the front of the case...

    It may not be so bad in the biggest of cities out here but, in short, give this place time or give it a miss. Open source products are turned proprietary for money and anything that costs money is pirated.

    Anon for obvious reasons.

  5. Gordon Fecyk
    Coffee/keyboard

    Hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah hah

    China has a truly open Android ecosystem, allowing us to see just how much malware and piracy such an ecosystem permits.

    QOTW Nomination!!!!!1!1!one

  6. The_Regulator

    Lol @ Google/Moto China

    Goes to show that the whole hacking/piracy thing really can have real world effects I guess. Not a good thing though that people are forced to deal with these crippled/privacy sucking apps.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Fine

    If they can't find a way to make profit in China, it makes no sense to do business there. That said, I'm guessing Google is probably following a "We want it all and we want it now" model of growth business when starting small probably makes sense. A Chinese version of the Play store with guaranteed (Apple style) quality control would surely be useful to a certain percentage of the Chinese market?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fine

      Google business model is to be cheap or free (with limitations, ie no Google apps). Hard to make that work in China where everything is cheap.

      Google can't even write decent usable (by normal people, not geeks) software in English, so doing so in Chinese will be a huge challenge.

      1. M Gale

        Re: Fine

        "Google can't even write decent usable (by normal people, not geeks) software in English, so doing so in Chinese will be a huge challenge."

        Duhhh click da maps button.. whee maps.

        Duhh herrr.. I wanna search. Tappity typy, click da search button. OMG RESULT!

        Da phone! I pressy da phone icon, whee a phone pad!

        Dat took me aaaaaaall week to learn da stuff. It wuz hard. Ur right, da Google stuff needs a pro.. ffes.. or.. thing.. to undastand.

  8. All names Taken

    WIMPs?

  9. dssf

    For a sec...

    I thought the article was going to relate to VPN banning/blocking running off a major company. But, how great is the reality that foreign companies relying upon VPNs may pack up and leave?

    IF (and that is just an if) foreign companies leave a here and there, what is the likely business model pain they will feel? Did many of them have to turn over to locals some 51% of the venture/entity in order to be allowed to "play" in the country? If so, then it seems to me that blocking VPNs would be an interesting way to take overe "abandoned" companies.

    But, the article is about GoogoRola's inability to compete.

    In August, in Shanghai, I was looking at a brand of local Android phone. It began with a C, IIRC, and it was in one of the major e-box stores, a local version of Best Buy (which probably spelt doom for the long-vacant Best Buy building a few blocks away), selling all sorts of electronics plus refrigerators, portable air conditioners, heaters, washers, dryers, and such. Anyway, at the time, someone local told me not to consider buying the Chinese version of the phone (it was rather nice-looking, but cost only some US $100) since it reportedly had main board or circuitry problems. And, it would not work in the US if I decided to try to use it there. And, that it might try to phone home, no matter where I connected it to a network. That was dissuasive/persuasive enough.

    With these apps being knocked off and shamelessly even keeping the headers or dev memos, it will be just a matter of time before the local devs reverse engineer, improve upon, and make it extremely difficult for just about ANYone with a profit motive from planting a flag there. If the music apps are already upping in quality, then so long to so many other types of apps.

    As for domestic security, this probably plays very well into the hands of the departments that want clean, smooth access into apps and devices.

  10. Dan Paul
    Devil

    Isn't it obvious enough? It's not an inability to compete, they are not being ALLOWED to compete!

    Google are one of the most savvy tech comnpanies in existence. When Google says it's not worth bothering with China, people should stand up and listen because IMHO, Google's outlook/viewpoints on doing business in China are rather valuable.

    China will not ALLOW Google (or many other companies) to operate in China and that government ACTIVELY interferes with foreign companies at every turn.

    Why waste more time and money chasing speccuous business in a country that condones and promotes intellectual property theft at every level of business and government?????

    The so called "value" of the Chinese "market" is totally overblown. Once you get past the fact that they will take everything you have programmed, change the names (maybe), and sell it off on some other site, why bother with such an obviously losing proposition?

    An oxygen generating system manufacturer from the Buffalo, NY area went to China for the low manufacturing costs. All they got from it was a much cheaper competitor who stole all their designs, formed another company and they can't be sued in China.

    This situation has happened hundreds of times now to manufacturers from many countries. Why does greed blind people so badly that they keep making the same stupid mistake over and over again?

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