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I went through the developer forum to know the difference between managed an unmanaged in-app products. they are saying that "Items that are unmanaged do not have their transaction information stored on Android Market, which means you cannot query Android Market to retrieve transaction information for items whose purchase type is listed as unmanaged. You are responsible for managing the transaction information of unmanaged items." What does it mean? When i test the in-app product for both managed and unmanaged im getting proper response from server, in my merchant account also the order is getting displyed for both managed and un-managed app. please help me to know the difference between these two.

Andro Dev
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2 Answers2

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UnManaged could be something like "Buy 50 points"

The 50 points would then be added to your account and you would store this on your accounts server, therefore the Android Market no longer needs to know that you purchased this product i.e. it will not remember your purchase and you can purchase it multiple times.

Managed could be "Buy this song"

In this scenario you do not have a server to record that they bought the song and so every time they reinstall you can query the market to see they bought the song and it will not let you download it more than once.

Managed is aimed at one time downloads then you 'own that object'.

UnManaged is for multiple downloads of the same thing to 'top something up'.

Least thats my understanding.

Version 3 has the concept of 'consumables' and it works inline with the above. All products are managed but you can 'consume' a product.

i.e. "Buy 50 points" will give the user fifty managed points, the user will not be allowed to purchase that item again until you consume that product.

Therefore you can make unmanaged products by consuming instantly, or managed products by consuming when the user has "used" that product (i.e. never call consume for buying a song).

Blundell
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  • will it make any issue in billing if we use unmanaged product in market? – Andro Dev Feb 22 '12 at 08:32
  • Yes and No, it depends on what your product is, as outlined in the example above. Managed is for a one time purchase, UnManaged is to buy multiples of the same thing. – Blundell Feb 22 '12 at 08:33
  • whats the limitation for unmanaged product in market? do they have any limitation like only 50 downloads acceptable or 60 like that? – Andro Dev Feb 22 '12 at 08:34
  • That I don't know, but doubt there would be a limit. – Blundell Feb 22 '12 at 08:34
  • I have implemented in-app in my application.the scenario is like this.Once user click the buy btn we are giving 5 mp3s to user.If the user played all the 5, his plan will be over and again the user needs to click buy button to buy 5 more mp3s.i created an in-app product as Un-managed item,since the user needs to purchase multiple times.i read the documentation saying that Android market won't support subscription and auto renewal. the scenario we have implemented for our application is like subscription. Will android banned my application if i implement this scenario in my project. – Andro Dev Feb 28 '12 at 05:37
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    This is no longer true for API version 3, all products should be under "Managed". A description of why can be found in the official documents: http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/api.html#consume – Oliver Dixon Jun 27 '13 at 05:20
  • @Andro Dev Do u got any solution? – Anu Jun 18 '14 at 07:11
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As of Version 3 of the Android Billing API, both consumable and non-consumable goods can be managed. From what I've gathered if you want to use the version 3 billing API, all your IAPs must be "managed".

Here's a link to the documentation: http://developer.android.com/google/play/billing/api.html#consumetypes

Alexander Wong
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