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Is is possible for me to publish an android app on my own website and not use android market. The app is for use with our internet software services and is therefor only in the interest of our existing clients.

The second questions is, can I install updates to my app after it is installed or would I have to use the market to accomplish that task?

700 Software
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1 Answers1

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Yes, you can absolutely install directly from your own website. If you point your browser at the URL where your package is, it will know how to install it upon download.

As for updates, I don't believe you could have it do updates automatically when they're available without some other mechanism (having the app call home and check for updates or something), but if you just point the browser at the updated package to download it, it will handle the upgrade as well upon download and installation.

Blumer
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  • Sounds good! Perhaps I will be able to make an app that can update another app - granted they will have to use the same user id - any help on either of those items would be appreciated..... This is a cool website!! This was my first question. – 700 Software Oct 01 '10 at 16:27
  • Glad it helped--if you could check the checkmark next to this, that will denote it as the accepted answer. Although maybe I wasn't clear on the update part: you wouldn't need a second app to handle the updates. You could just have your app connect to the site where the package is available for download and read from an html/text/etc. file what the current version is. Then compare that to the version that's running, and if it's greater, let the user know there's an update available. – Blumer Oct 01 '10 at 16:31
  • Can I do a seamless update like Google Chrome has? – 700 Software Oct 01 '10 at 16:33
  • Configured Webserver to serve APK files as having the MIME type of application/vnd.android.package-archive – Durai Amuthan.H May 29 '14 at 14:07
  • Note that for this to work, the user needs to have "Allow installation from unknown sources" enabled on their device. – Jonas Czech Jun 04 '16 at 10:20