Hi! This is A Minute of Overpass.
My name is Eric and I make apps. Now, this
week let's talk about the "Chinese App
Markets".
Okay, so today let's talk about China. Now a
couple of people have been asking me
recently in the comments and also
emailing me, asking me to talk about the
Chinese app market and this is something
that again I'm not an expert in. I've
done a little bit of dabbling around it.
So this morning, one of my New Year's
resolutions this year
aside from doing a daily video was I
wanted to do a Chinese version of A
Minute Of Overpass. So you know when I
was 19 years old I joined
the army. They sent me to language school
in Monterey, California to learn Chinese,
and it was something that kind of kept
up. I've been to China a couple times. I
try to keep it up and over the last
3 or 4 months, I've been doing
twice a week meeting with the
Chinese instructor over
Skype and we're talking about things
that will be app related because I thought
eventually I want to do like a Chinese
version of A Minute Of Overpass. For no
other reason then maybe we'll get more
app downloads in and stuff like that.
Maybe new clients who knows, but
anyway this morning I did the first one
and I uploaded it to Yoku which is kinda
like the Chinese equivalent of YouTube.
So you know this is one of the big
problems about going into the Chinese
market. It's easy on iOS, you just
have to release an app, make sure it's
localized and you're good, but for
Android, Google is not in China.
They have the Great Firewall
of China so a lot of services
they just don't get over there. If you
ever been to China you know you can't
get the Facebook, you can't get Twitter, you can get
YouTube or Google or anything like that
because of Google's you know back in
2009, I can't remember
exactly what it was. It was that big
conflict between Google and China and in
the end they just sort of think they
pulled out and and things were blocked.
So this morning I was uploading the...
I finally finish this video,
rehearsed it a few times more than I do
in the English version obviously and then I
uploaded it to Yoku. Here it is here on
my screen. “Every week I make
a video in English about software development.
Today, I want to try to use Chinese . . ."
So I uploaded it and it was very
slow and very painful. Now, so anyway I don't
know how it will do. Maybe nobody will ever
watch it, maybe whatever but
you know I got that one off my bucket
list. Anyway, so one of the...
the nice thing about having Yoku and
there's a few other video services over
there, again I'm not an expert so if
you're Chinese you tell me I'm wrong.
Cool. Put it in the comments.
I'd love to hear about it. Everybody
would learn to love to hear about the
Chinese app market a little bit more on
the Android side. So but you know so we
have the Yoku being the Chinese
equivalent of YouTube. We have like Weibo
being the Chinese equivalent of Twitter,
but when it comes to apps we don't
really have an equivalent for Google
Play. In fact, we have like a lot of
different markets out in China for
the app market. So a couple that I've
used in the past as I've used China
Mobile and I've used Hiapk and I
tried to log into both of them today
you know just having loads of trouble
getting in, so I can't show you those
screens. It's all in Chinese anyway. That's
one of the problems with it is you have
to rely a lot on you know I could read a
bit, but you know I rely a lot on Google
Translate to get through all those kind
of things and it's you know it's a bit
muddy and everything like that, but you
can find partners to help you. So Hiapk
is a something that I've used
before and that didn't get that many
downloads and China Mobile didn't get
very many either actually to be honest
with you, and it could be
the marketing text that I use, the
translations of everything. So I
don't know.
Now one of the things I noticed about
going into... the reason I went to Hiapk
was because one day I was
looking at my apps. I was looking at Ear Spy and
Google Analytics and I saw we had this
huge spike in downloads, and I
looked at it and I saw that was all coming
from the Android version in China, and I
looked that up. I looked that up trying to think
how would it be over in China?
and then I saw that it wasn't you know
it wasn't actually the package name. So
the package name is "com.
microphone.earspy". So it was actually
"com.microphone.earspy." and it was
like 3 other letters on there. I
thought wait that's not my app so I
googled it and I found the same app with
the different icon. So somebody had taken it
and decompiled it. Back then I
wasn't using ProGuard or any of those
other kind of security things so
somebody had downloaded it.
Deconstructed the APK and then put it
out there as theirselves for the Chinese
app market and they did
phenomenally better marketing than
I did.
So in the end what I had to do is go on to
the market and let them know that
"Hey this is my app. This belongs
to me. Here's the Google Play
page, a proof and all this kind of
stuff, and in the end they took it down.
They took it down like immediately
because this is kind of just a problem
something to look out for. But last year,
I spoke to a company called AppsToChina
and they helped out with the with
translating, well putting some of my apps
on the app market. So we tried to do this
again with Ear Spy, this time going
through this company. So it's
called AppsToChina, it's
a pretty good service. I'm sure there's
loads more. So basically, I spoke to
somebody he said "Yeah we can put
this on the market" and all
this kind of stuff. They guide
me through making
certain changes because different
markets have different rules and stuff
like that. Someone more likely to accept
something someplace else
with different tweaks and stuff
like that. So it was actually really good
to go through them.
However, we had a few problems here
and there. So if you actually go to this
AppsToChina website, here you can see
there's a stores page and they show some
of the top stories. I mean there's
there's a lot more than this I think. I
think AppsToChina wasn't that much
money and they submitted it to like
10 different app markets or 20
different app markets, but one of the
questions I asked him early on was
"Will this be my own market page
so that I could go through and check the
status as I want to?" and they said yes
but I don't know why because that wasn't
the case.
So anyway, I'll show you a Skype
conversation here. So
we spoke, so me and this guy Shawn we
spoke through Skype for
quite a while here and you know
I'm setting up my icon for Ear Spy
everything and he goes "This is
no good for the Chinese app market".
This is it because you don't know,
when you have your own stuff you could
try stuff out, but when you're going through
an intermediary they're saying this won't
be accepted but you know can we try
it? but so anyway they didn't like Ear Spy
the logo. So he suggested something
like this, like this guy here with the
guitar and I thought that is so not the
theme of the app, right? So in the end
we win it,
and we made a new icon here like we
just basically took Ear Assist and
gave it the Ear Spy colors, and we have
you know a lot more conversations here
and they said that the name Ear
Spy was no good because the word
spying and I thought well this is China you
know maybe that's the case. So he gave me
an alternate name and it was already
translated into Ear Fun, so I thought
yeah it's terrible, but we use it
anyway. I just wanted to get it out there and
check it out and finally we got it out
there on the app market. We got a few
other app markets and it involved me
signing the apks over and over and over
again, and It was like you know problems
here and there. And finally when it went live you
know a week later they started
sending me stats. I said well how can I log
in and see these? and they said and I
went to look at it and it wasn't my own store
page, it was like their store page. So
basically I was putting my app out there
on their store page which for me was a
deal breaker, right?
I'd rather get somebody to set up
everything for me like a
freelancer which I plan on doing one of
these days and just really hitting all
those markets, but I haven't done yet,
and there's just a sheer amount of time
when you go into those interfaces even
being able to read a bit of Chinese you
know there's a lot of texts there and
just have to go through all that kind of
stuff. I mean just putting the video on
Yoku this morning was really really
tough you know it was slow, and I
think it might be to do with the
Firewall or maybe just the distances, you
know there's so much texting, and all
things pop up. You think uh I don't know
what that means. I put into Google
Translate, but if you have apps on the
Android app market in China please let
us know because
I know there's loads of people who
watch this channel who would like to know
about it and let us know what kind of
successes you've had, because I've
been kind of been really hit miss there
and that shouldn't be the case.
iOS is easy. iOS you put something out
there, make sure you have it localized and
you know you have just as much chance of
hitting everybody as everybody else, but
with Android we just don't have that
Google Play alternative over there.
So anyway, that's it for this week. I'll
talk to you guys next week and
that's it. “Zaijian” (Goodbye)