The survey of 75 Android developers found that 27% of respondents see app piracy as a “huge problem”, and 26% see piracy as “somewhat of a problem”, the Yankee Group found.
In addition, 53% of respondents said that Google is “too lax” on app policies for its Android Market. Three-quarters of Android developers surveyed said it is easy to copy and republish an Android app. Almost half said that pirating an Android app is “very easy.”
Around one-third of Android developers said that piracy has cost them in excess of $10,000 in revenue, 32% said it increases their support costs, and one-quarter said it increases server costs due to heavy loads imposed by pirated copies.
The Yankee Group examined the following companies in the report: Adobe, Amazon, Apple, CloseCrowd, Google, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Microsoft, Skyhook, and SmartDyne.
The Boston-based consulting firm conducted the survey with Skyhook Wireless, which is suing Google for excluding its geolocation system from Android devices, according to a report by Information Week.
KeyesLabs, an Android developer, estimated that the piracy rate for its Screebl Pro app at 67% worldwide, which jumps to 70% when just the US is examined. “Since the US has supported paid apps from the very beginning, this would tend to argue against the idea that piracy comes primarily from countries that don't support the sale of apps”, the company observed.