Android Market on Emulator (2.2)

It's been some time that I had tried getting the Market up and running on a 2.2 a.k.a Froyo emulator. On a previous post, I had described how to setup an emulator (1.5 and 1.6) with the Market app. Today, I got a comment on that post which points to a 2.2 image that does the same. You just have to download that image file and follow exactly the same steps to set it up.

This is the link to the system.img file. Thanks Anonymous for your contribution. I have tried this, and it works. Here's a link (David's Blog) that anonymous referred to. He has described all the steps to create this system image needed to put the Market app on emulator.

A few things: 
- This image will only work on a 2.2 emulator
- While creating the emulator, you should specify the cache partition size as 96 MB.

Check out the previous post for more details.

There are however a few limitations that I found with this hack.

1. The Android Market app doesn't seem to update itself to the new UI that we currently have on our phones.
2. There are only a limited number of apps that show up on the Market. (No Angry Birds for example)

Market your apps aggresively

You have created a cool app, and have also updated it unto the Android Market. Great!!!! So, do you sit idle and wait for people to buy your app? Is your work done? A big "NO".

The Android Market has around 20000 apps today. And new apps are pouring in daily in large numbers. How do you tell people/users, "Hey, people, here is a cool app that you should check out"? From among these 20000 apps, people will never bother to enter your app's name in the search box. They just don't have the time.

So, how do you go about and spread the word about your app? Well, here are some tips.

1. Create a website for your app and update it regularly.
2. Create a blog for your app and provide as much information as you want about upcoming features, bugs and maybe tutorials.
3. Use twitter to reach to your friends.
4. Facebook also is quite a good medium through which you can broadcast your message on everybody's walls.
5. Create a forum for your app where people can come in and enter their issues/experiences.
6. Request some Android app websites to publish a review for your app.
7. Submit links to your website/blog to a few bookmarking websites, don't over-do it though.
8. If you want, you can also submit to alternate websites for the Android Market for people who don't have access to the market.
9. Make sure that your app has an apt description about what it does when you upload it to the market.
10. Ask for feedback from people who use your application regularly.