An Inter-Store Transaction Mechanism to Distribute Mobile Applications

Abstract

Android is one of the popular OSs and application platforms for mobile devices. There are numerous appstores in the world, including Google Play and Amazon Appstore for Android. These appstores with DRM-protection and In-App Purchasing APIs provide various business models to their app developers. However, the APIs and implementations are very different among the appstores. Therefore, accommodating the mobile apps to other appstores may require extra maintenance and porting overheads. This paper proposes a mechanism that supports inter-store transactions to distribute appstore-dependent apps by slightly modifying the appstore client and service logic. Consequently, the app developers can publish their DRM-protected apps and purchasable items in the apps at once to wide markets without rewriting the programs.