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m:lab By John Kieti / August 5, 2012

Kenyan Developers to Make Money from Apps

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Samsung Now Allowing Paid Apps in Kenya : Mobile application developers can now receive payments for apps downloaded from the Samsung Apps market place in Kenya. This new development increases monetization options for developers in East Africa whose applications target the Kenyan Market.

In our earlier article titled “Samsung Apps-Diversifying local App Distribution Options” in January, we noted the inability for developers to configure their apps for consumer to pay for downloads. In June 2012, the paid downloads feature improving this was activated in the Kenyan market.

Samsung Apps has seen an increasing number of mobile developers from across East Africa uploading their Android apps as a result of the increasing realisation by developers that signing up to be publishers at the store is free.

The increased number of developers publishing apps to Samsung Apps has also seen more developers comment on what they consider a superior Quality Control (QC) process with the store. They specifically observe shorter turnaround time once applications go into the QC stage in comparison to other app stores. Developers are also particularly impressed by the informative video they get from the store’s QC team on bugs and imperfections identified when the developers’ apps are tested.
Local applications in the Samsung Apps store include Mfarm, MedAfrica, mShop, uhasibu, Olalashe, and Nduru. To support the local developer community, Samsung Electronics, one of the world’s largest consumer electronics manufacturers supports local developer in creating awareness and visibility of their applications through mainstream media channels.

Author : John Kieti

John Kieti is the Lead at m:lab East Africa. He is an exponent for mobile entrepreneurship and an experienced m4d professional. John is passionate about the growth of East Africa's knowledge economy. He holds an MBA and BSc in Computer Science. He also occasionally shares his thoughts about East Africa's knowledge economy on his blog - gmeltdown.com