I can’t think of any deal-breaking drawbacks of using separate package names. I just think it adds extra complexity for no reason.
I like to keep things the same as much as possible so if there’s no need to have separate package names, then don’t do it.
Having to make unnecessary modifications to code eventually leads to typos, that result in bugs.
When I first started out, I used different package names. Google play would get com.myname.myapp, where Amazon would get com.myname.myapp.az and Barnes & Nobel would get com.myname.myapp.bn. I think I did this because of an Amazon question about “Is this app available in other stores” and I was afraid they would reject apps that were not unique to them (I was naive back then).
Today I don’t know of any reason to not use the same package name every where. I even try to use the same name on Apple as the Bundle ID.
Rob
Thanks guys for the useful information! I am in the process of submitting my first android app to Google Play, Amazon, and B & N. I will try using the same package name everywhere and let you know how it goes.
Thanks, Jan
Yes please do.
So my experience so far:
Nook: they dont accept submissions from my country (Norway)
Amazone: Good.
Samsung: My first app was approved but the next version was rejected as it could not be installed on phones with external memory. This is not the app itself but Corona.
Also on iOS I get some downloads for the paid version every day. On the others nothing.
I have one app with more then 2M downloads and iOS is the thing 
My app store ranking (please note I give my apps away for free and do advertising with admob and vungle. I don’t do IAP at this time):
This store gives my apps the most downloads out of all the stores. Advertising with admob usually gives about 2x eCPMs on iOS vs android. Advertising with vungle looks to be about 4x eCPM on iOS vs android!
In my experience, this is the most lucrative android app store. I get the most android downloads from this store by far. Advertising revenue with admob will get you the same eCPMs across all android stores, so that is not a problem here!
Second most downloads out of the android stores. Harder to get exposure on this one.
Not very many downloads, but it’s still worth deploying to. A small amount of ad revenue.
Not very many downloads. Nook does not allow advertising and does not allow you to give away your apps for free (it forces you to charge at least $0.99). I’ve gotten a few sales off nook, but at this point not a lot of return on investment.
I am looking forward to windows store and windows phone marketplace support in corona because I think they would become my new number 2 and number 3 respectively. I have some non-corona apps on those marketplaces and they get lots more downloads than my android apps. Corona would need to add a plugin for pubcenter ads (Microsoft ads) though to make it worth while since admob pays only a couple cents eCPM for windows phone and don’t have any support for windows store. (HINT HINT corona!)
This is not our experience. We have released both Free and Prepaid apps on the NOOK store. We have also used the Fortumo system to enable IAP with our Free apps. (Although today we are only releasing our apps as Prepaid.)
Our results on NOOK have been quite successful and frequently our sales on Nook have exceeded all other Android stores. Part of the reason for this may be that we have targeted NOOK Color and NOOK Tablet devices and this relatively large audience is hungry for new apps. Of course, due to recent changes in the Corona SDK, you will have to roll back to a certain version of Corona to be able to continue to target this Android 2.2 devices, but that may in fact be worth your while.
On the advertising side, B&N does have a couple of promotional programs that they offer regularly - NOOK Deal of the Week and NOOK Free App Friday. You can work through the Developer portal to contact them to get involved in these programs. Also, they do seasonal promotional programs on a regular basis - usually tied to a holiday.
In short, we’ve been quite pleased with our results investing in the NOOK platform.
So… I have been doing apps for Samsung for a while now and really would not like to lose the ability to develop for their store. There is a clause in the rule that indicates that if you are a partner, then you do not need to use their sdk. More specifically they wrote to me:
“This is to inform you that you have been pre-defined as a ‘Partner’ of Samsung Apps based on your past app registration and partnership. You can register apps without any limitations where we look forward to your next app registration.”
I’m sure others received similar emails or could ask to be partners.
Along with that, I was just informed by Nook that my current builds are not comparable with their new device. What can be done about this?
Scott
Scott - I know that a Corona app built with a recent build will run fine on the new Nook device(s). If they told you about such an issue, it’s probably because the app was made with a fairly old build of Corona. So you probably just have to re-build with a more recent version of Corona.
To add on to what David said, with regards to “new” Nook devices: starting with Daily build 2264, we switched our Android to a minimum 2.3.3 version to support the required changes by Google’s advertising solutions. According to B&N’s Nook site:
Nook Color: Android 2.2
Nook Tablet: Android 2.3 (note, not 2.3.3)
Nook HD and HD+: Android 4.0.4
B&N is now pushing some variant of the Samsung Galaxy Tab instead of their Nook specific brands, so they should have a more modern Android on them.
From this, the Nook Color will require building with a build before 2264. The Nook Tablet may or may not work because I don’t know if the major version is sufficient or not. Even though the site says 2.3, they could run 2.3.something and only show 2.3, so for that device, your mileage may vary.
Rob
Well, it’s not quite that simple. First, I’ve not deployed an app to the Ouya store yet only directly to the device. You should be able to use the same package name. Most of your code should be fine too, but consider these issues:
The Ouya is not a touch device. You have to integrate controller support. And while the actual code to integrate the controller isn’t difficult, many touch oriented games/apps are not suitable for controllers. You may have to re-think things.
The Ouya is a landscape only device. Vertical games are not going to play well on it. The game I wanted to port was a vertical app and I never got the game play working well in the flipped world.
The Ouya isn’t Google Play. If you are using things like ads from AdMob, Google’s in app purchases, GP Game Services, Licensing and expansion packs, you’re going to have to code around them. Ouya has their on IAP you should use. I don’t know of any Ad services targeting them.
To get the app to show up on the Ouya’s main menu you have to add this little block of code into your build.settings “android” table:
android =
{
mainIntentFilter =
{
categories = { “tv.ouya.intent.category.GAME” }
}
},
Rob
Thanks for responding.
But for Nook, Samsung and Amazone its that easy right?
It works perfect in the simulator but I dont have the devices to test it (not easy to get a hold of either)
For Nook, Samsung and Amazon, your app will work mostly unchanged. Ads and In App Purchases and Google Play Game Services will have to be accounted for still.
For IAP: Amazon has their own plugin for Corona SDK. Nook uses the Fortumo plugin and of course for Google, you would use the Google Play. Samsung has allowed using Google Play services, but they have recently announced that apps on their store must use Samsung SDK’s for things like IAP.
For Ads, Nook doesn’t allow them. Amazon does not like ads that promote apps for Google Play, so whatever ad service you use needs to recognize the platform you’re on and deliver Amazon compatible ads. There is an Amazon Ad plugin from the 3rd party plugin service that you probably should consider using that plugin.
For “Game Center” type activities, Nook uses Google Play Game Services, so that should be fine. Amazon should also allow use of GPGS but they have their own GameCircle that they would prefer you to use. Someone is building a plugin for it, but its not ready yet. If you want to use it now you can use Enterprise now.
Now for Samsung, they notified their developers that starting July 1, 2014, they will begin rejecting apps that do not use their SDKs. They offer SDKs for Ads, Game networking, and IAP. What is unclear and we are still researching, is if you just need to use one of these or all of them (if you use these features), what level of Google Play they will continue to support. As of today, Enterprise subscribers should be able to use the Samsung SDK’s to add support for your app.
Rob
Rob
Thanks a lot for clarifying
I see with the latest daily build that support for targeting the Samsung App store has been removed. Is this a temporary measure to avoid disappointing developers with rejected builds or a more permanent decision to not support the SDK change requirements imposed by Samsung? We were working on some apps specifically being targeted to Samsung device users so this would be good to understand.
tschussler - This is driven by the fact that we don’t exactly understand Samsung’s SDK requirements, and we haven’t been able to get a solid answer. To the degree that Samsung will still accept standard APKs, then Corona apps will work fine in their store.
But if they are now requiring Samsung-specific SDKs to be built in, then for now we do not support those (of course, you can always build them in with Corona Enterprise). It’s not clear to us if this is the case. Depending on how you interpret their messaging, they may just be saying that they want their own non-Google alternatives to be used when possible, or that they actually require certain Samsung SDKs even if they are not being used.
At this point in time we do not have any Samsung-specific SDKs available in Corona SDK, so we have to remove the “explicit support”.
For Samsung App Store, how big of a market share do they have compared to Google Play Store, Nook etc. I would love to publish to the Samsung Store but will it be worth the extra effort and hassle to publish to a store with a small market share? Apple Store, Google Play, Amazon, and Nook are absolutely must haves for me.
An observation from Adobe’s site: “For what it’s worth, we have submitted three apps to Samsung, and the combined total of the three for the last month is about half of the downloads for just the worst of the three in iTunes. So, no great loss to not submit to Samsung.”
I get more downloads and ad impressions from my apps on the Samsung App Store than I do on Google Play, and Amazon app store is the lowest of them all. Just my own experience… I would hate to see Corona drop support for it. I guess we’ll see what happens.
It’s not really Corona dropping support for Samsung. It’s Samsung that have changed their submission rules and now require their SDK’s to be used. I’m not 100% sure what Samsung mean by this either.
Ironically I can’t submit to Samsung even though I live in Korea as their system can’t handle a non-Korean developer with a Green Card, and with a Korean address.
If corona doesn’t change app builds to meet their new terms then it is dropping support as submitting corona apps to the samsung app store will no longer be possible.
Thank you David and Rob.
Question on Nook, which build would be sufficient for it to work? Do I need to go to a minimum build of 2264 or more?
And then as far as Samsung goes… will choosing “none” as the target app store be sufficient for Samsung? Or was their something special that was added when we used to select Samsung?
Scott