Apps-android-commons: Make app available on other app stores?

[misaochan]

As suggested by a user at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Mobile_app#Additional_app_stores , would it be a good idea to make our app available on other Android app stores beyond Google Play and F-Droid? The user suggested Amazon Appstore and Samsung Galaxy Apps.

[nicolas-raoul]

Indeed that could bring us a few more users.
The lion's share will still be Play Store, though, as illustrated by the statistics of my other app which is available on 15 other markets:
https://github.com/ankidroid/Anki-Android/wiki/Contributing#markets

It is not easy:

• Registration takes time, sometimes requiring a contract to be signed and sent by snail mail, or sometimes costing money.
• Keeping the binaries up-to-date takes time, at every release.
• Some stores require a different icon, or require the app to be recompiled in a certain way
• The store account is often not shareable, meaning the users would just stop receiving updates, and the app takes search results, if the maintainer gets hit by a bus.

So, for each store I think we should only give our OK once we have found a volunteer who:

1. Has a device which is a target of that store
2. Has been around our app or Commons or Wikimedia or GitHub for a while, so that they do not disappear the next day
3. Is willing to spend like 3 days at the beginning and 5 hours each month on this.

[misaochan]

@nicolas-raoul Wow, 3 million downloads! ;) I agree, makes sense. Hopefully nobody will be hit by a bus(!), but indeed the maintenance overhead seems to not be worth the few additional users, especially considering our niche. Unless, as you say, we can get a volunteer to do it.

[VojtechDostal]

+1 on the bus thing, please be careful guys :-D

[daylenca]

The Wikipedia app is already on the Amazon Appstore, could we not just piggyback off the Wikimedia Foundation account (https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=bl_dp_s_web_0?ie=UTF8&search-alias=aps&field-brandtextbin=Wikimedia+Foundation&node=2350149011), just like on the Play Store?