How to implement an annual subscription only on the Android application itself, and not on products in the application

Question

In the Android documentation, you can find out how to subscribe to products that you offer for sale in your application. It includes the exchange of several messages with the Google server.

I just want to sell my application (not the products in it) with a subscription. I feel that it will be almost as easy as selling an application for a one-time fee. When the license becomes invalid in a year, the licensing mechanism on the Google server will inform the client about its renewal.

So my question is: should I implement all the billing in the application described in the documentation? What is the minimum work that I have to do to sell the app with a subscription? As far as I have researched, this is not obvious or understandable. Does anyone have more experience?

Answer 1

Google Play’s proprietary method of selling alone does not allow billing in the style of a subscription. If you want to have billing like a subscription, you must use it in billing or sell the application through your own website.

An absolute minimum would be to allow the user to download the application for free, or perhaps pay one year when purchasing the application itself. After downloading the free application, you should ask the user to pay the first payment by subscription. If you charged the user when purchasing the application, ask to pay it in a year.

So, let's, yes, you should use billing applications for this.