Product Tip: Publishing a mobile app
Publishing Apps onto Google Play Developer Console and iTunes Connect
There are two ways you can publish an app to the store either using automation tools or manually. In this write up we will cover manual publishing for both android and iOS apps. We will look at the two developer consoles used.
Developer console is a place where you can submit your apps to be published in the store, to make them available publicly for people to download.Until an app is publicly available, the work is not done yet. Publishing an app to the store is a way of distributing the product to the target audience at scale.
Apple’s developer console is iTunes Connect and Google’s is known as Google Play Developer Console.
The process of publishing to Google play and app store is relatively similar with slight differences in pricing, review periods and policies. The app store is more strict than google play when it comes to reviews and submissions.
Currently, the two largest global platforms for mobile apps distribution are:
- Apple’s App Store, which caters to iOS users.
- Google Play, which is the official app store for the Android OS.
1. Publishing Android apps to Google Play
- Create an account with Google Play Developer Console
From the Google Play Console you can manage all phases of publishing and reach over 1 billion active Android users on Google Play. Test your apps and gather insights before you launch, manage distribution and pricing across Android platforms, understand and improve your store performance, find new users, and more.
- Registration fee for this developer account is $25 (one time).
- Fill up the developer profile with details including name, address and email.
- Then create an application. Fill in details for store listing. This requires details about product details, short description, full description, graphic assets, app category details, contact details and privacy policy.
- Set up the app’s content rating.
- Then set up the pricing and store distribution details.Decide whether you want to charge users or it’s a free app. If you choose free, you can’t charge for it later on.
- Once the store set up is complete, you can create a release in batches,either as a beta or alpha release. It is advised to test the app before finally publishing to the public.
2. Publishing iOS apps to App Store
- Create an account with iTunes Connect
iTunes Connect is a suite of web-based tools for managing apps sold on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple TV, and iMessage. It’s also used to manage content on the iTunes Store and iBooks Store.
This will ask you to join Apple developer program. Apple Developer Program annual fee is 99 USD and the Apple Developer Enterprise Program annual fee is 299 USD
The other step are generally what we have in google play console.
- App store information which is information about the product.
- Set the pricing and availability. Choose to make your app free or paid and in which countries you want to make it available.
- Assets and app icons.
- Submit for review that might take some days as well as app releases to testflight for beta testing before publishing to the store.
