Experiences with Samsung app store ?

Does anyone here got experiences with Samsung app store? How many percentage of extra downloads does it provide to your apps?

Samsung = idiots… They would not list WordHero (which now has 2mil downloads) because ‘it needed a network connection’… I even tried several times before giving up.

On samsung i have 2-3% downloads of google play.

I have no problem with Samsung App, some time their process take long, but all my app have been approve (after sometime retry).
You can assure you follow all their requirement, and you can send support message from “Support page”

I don’t have much download for my apps, but here you can look at the data
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and here the total download in GP
1: 75
2: 46
3: 50
4: 42
5: 16579

The nice things about Samsung, if you don’t works well at marketing your app, then worth to try it(like me). In SamsungApps there are category for new application, so you should have an amount of download when your app release.

Did anyone try to sell something in their store? As they don’t allow ads in the app (reason: it links to another marketplace like Google Play). I’m about to take out all ads from my app and sell it and Samsung Store, would be nice to hear if u succeed.

It didnt even cross my mind about most ads linking to Google Play store. I did release an app with ads on Samsung store, and they approved it. I didnt know it isnt allowed…

In one of my apps I had to implement a “Exit ?” dialog when exiting via back button… admob interstitial are push notifications according to them… idiots.

Samsung app store is good market. I have about 10-15% installs of my app from it. It have a second place after google play for me.

I’ve been using it for a week and it’s being reasonably good.

Taking Google Play’s download count as the benchmark:

  • on the first 3 days I assume I had some kind of highlight on their store and had a good download count: about 60-70% of Google Play
  • after this initial period Im having around 15-20% of GP
  • on Amazon, for example, I have around 10% of GP, so Samsung is the #2 source of downloads for me

You can use them like a “debug / bug reporter”. They are reviewing the apps very carefully also recording videos of bugs. Use them.

Is the conversion rate better for paid apps on Samsung store ? That is, richer users, more willing to pay (like Apple Store) - or presumably more like Amazon ?

Does it increase chance for piracy - as you are releasing an ad-free APK - which could be distributed to all Android phones (compared to Amazon where absence of Google Play or presence of Amazon store could be used as indicator of it being Amazon and not have that version of your app work anywhere else)

Does one have to remove all ads ? So how does one get paid for free apps ?

I didnt remove any ads and they approved. And I didnt integrate IAP with Samsung (nor Amazon) to be able to compare the conversion rates with GP, but I believe both are indeed higher. But since the market is so smaller I didnt bother to learn how to do it on their market yet.

As an update, my downloads on the Samsung store dropped a bit more, so they are now around 10% of GP or maybe even a bit less (8%?), so right now it’s a bit less than Amazon.

So currently its: GP (100%) > Amazon (10%) > Samsung (8%)

I assume this is for a free app. I wonder what the stats would be for a paid app ?

Does Amazon App Store provide download number info so one can judge how well paid apps do versus their free counterparts.
On Google Play I have seen apps with 100K downloads, and the paid version has 100 downloads ! That is a 1/100 ratio.

That is would it be something like (since Google Play is notorious for having very low paid download numbers usually):

GP (100%) > Amazon (50%) > Samsung (50%) ???

Same question for Samsung.

If you have developed for both Amazon and Samsung - were there things you had to remove for Amazon.

I am thinking of posting a paid version priced at $5 or something - so those desperate to get the paid version can just get it from Amazon (I can’t sell paid apps on Google Play) - I wonder how profitable that might be ?

here is my 5 months experience with samsung apps in compare to Google play
Total download:
Samsung apps :494k
Google play : 316k
Most of users are from europ which is pretty good.
Their certification team is kinda stupid sometimes they don’t approve the app for delicious reasons.
my apps are based on Galaxy Series so probably that’s why i got high download rate their over Google play.
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Samsung fees is terrible, especially for premium SMS: Having sold 10$, you get around 1$.
The ratio for me was very similar to GooglePlay.

What do you mean “based on Galaxy Series” - mean been tested on them ?

How do you think paid apps would work on Samsung ? Do they have a well designed paid environment so it attracts users to pay ?

With Samsung do you have to worry about links to Google Play - i.e. change them to Samsung app store (or for Chinese market if GP is not present etc. but Samsung is - i.e. does Samsung ship in China without GP) ?

yes that’s true i develop my apps with Galaxy devices so i’m pretty sure that they are optimized for Galaxy series

their Ad network called Adhub it’s pretty poor they pay 1$ per 1000 installs . if you going develop an app that related to Smart tv or bada/Tizen that’s you only choice so far.

they have very straight policy about links to other stores such as GP and yes many times my apps got rejected cause they had links to other apps in GP. About china i don’t know a lot but you can’t use admob ads within your app if you are trying to target China in samsung apps.

WRONG! This is my stats with admob from China with an app on Samsung.