Big company X provides its employees with Android phones. Those employees don't necessarily own a Play Store account (gmail address required AFAIK).
At the moment, my alternative is to send a link to our .apk file, however the installation procedure might be quite complicated, not even mentioning the updates.
What's the best way to deploy my app to these phones?
Uchiha Madara is right, but it's not very convenient. They can also subscribe to Google Apps for Business ! Besides, if phones are Lollipop phones, you can very easily enable Android For Work, with pretty useful features to controll mass-hardware !
However, it's not the unique solution. You can self-host your apk file as you do, make a webservice and make your app able to communicate with to check updates ! The only problem is to teach users how to allow install from unknown sources (in security settings), which may be hard if they aren't very confortable with Android phones.
Other solution, some companies offer whole turnkey solutions, like PushLink
You could try HockeyApp to allow the users to install the application and know them about the updates.
http://hockeyapp.net/features/
My guess is you will have to use DropBox and they can download it as long as there is Wi Fi of course and ro to the settings > security and check Unknown sources so that it can install the apk from the internet, they can then go to their downloads folder and see the apk there, then install it onto their phones. Hope this helped!
Source: http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-install-apps-outside-of-google-play/
I think the best way to achieve your requirements is using Microsoft Intune.
Microsoft Intune is a cloud-based service that focuses on mobile device management (MDM) and mobile application management (MAM). You control how your organization’s devices are used, including mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. You can also configure specific policies to control applications. For example, you can prevent emails from being sent to people outside your organization. Intune also allows people in your organization to use their personal devices for school or work. On personal devices, Intune helps make sure your organization's data stays protected and can isolate organization data from personal data.
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I spend a lot more time in the iOS space than Android, so apologies if this is an obvious question ...
We have an enterprise Android app that we need to roll out to a lot of locations nationwide. Ideally, we'd like to be able to install our current app (and future apps) without involving the onsite staff. Is there a way to do remote installs for Android devices? We could do the installs ourselves then ship out the devices, but there will be additional apps added to this project over the next year, so we don't want to keep shipping the devices back and forth. And due to the nature of the industry and end users, it would be best if we could control install centrally instead of relying on those remote staff to do so. And we are looking at >1000 devices, if that affects the answer.
All the solutions I've found so far are more for individual users, not for a large setup like ours.
Unfortunately I think this question may be closed as it is off topic (https://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) - however having dealt with the problem I feel your pain.
There are a few options (I have done several of these myself):
1. Write your own store: Requires creating a service and client, not easy
2. Use a BYOD tool such as MobiControl: https://www.soti.net/mobicontrol/
There are some solutions for this case, some are better than others and may not be helpful for your case, but these are some of them:
1 - Put your APK on a Web Server and config your APK to look on this server for new versions. Using an intent you can download it and open it, but it should prompt the user to accept the install.
2 - If devices are rooted, you can use the ADB commands to install the new APK without prompt the user to accept it.
3 - If you're able to do it, you can configure a VPN on your client's network, and use it to remote connect and use ADB for each device trough the network.
4 - If your App is in the Play Store, your app should auto-update if the app is configured to auto-update from the Play Store.
I'm sure there are some others ways to do it, so if none of these help you at all, don't worry.
I build an android application but I want that when I give it for testing then user can not copy it and that apk should not be installed on other devices?how is it possible .can I protect that apk?
Get the device ids of the devices you are going to test and just check to see if the current device is one of the devices you want.
There are online services that provide you ability to upload application and use it via browser, for example appsuffer.com. Also HP provide ability to upload application to the real devices in they network and test your apps online on remote devices. I thinks this is one of solutions if you don't want to share you code with testers.
I'm working on a project now which requires a lot of apks.
I need to download APKS from android markets (not limited to Google Play) using my computer.
I found this post that might help me, but im still looking for other tools/website(which will allow to download FREE apps in the desktop) that can solve my problem.
Im also targetting apks that can be dowloaded(was made) in Europe and or other continent except Asia. Could you give point the market which contains these kinds of APKS?
What I need to do is to make a system that will analyze each apk. tell if the app is consuming too much resources (battery, memory usage etc.)
The extension you linked is based on a reverse engineered Android Market client. You can easily find the sources. There are also PHP and Python ports. However, it is using the old Market/Play protocol and some apps may not be accessible. See their Google group for details.
Generally, to do this, you need to pretend to be the Google Play client and use the same protocol it does. Additionally, downloading too fast will get you banned, so you will need to rate limit your app and/or use multiple Google accounts.
And of course, you can simply get a device with a lot of memory, install a bunch of apps, and then pull them off the device for analysis.
Found these articles that enumerate app stores and some of them allow user to download apk's in PC
http://www.ilovefreesoftware.com/04/featured/download-apk.html
http://mobiputing.com/2011/06/17-places-to-download-android-apps/
you can visit apk search engine such as http://apkdroid.in you can find any apk file and download it directly to your PC
I saw sites like rhogallery (http://rhohub.com/), testflightapp.com helping developers to test their app before it goes for app store or marketplace.
I would like to know whether Apple/Android allows (with legal permission) us to setup our own Repo like this?
Our need is to host and serve mobile apps while we dont want that to be made publically available on App store/Marketplace.
Old question now but would be useful for somebody searching for this. From what I know, you can install third part apps from places other than the app stores but by enabling that particular setting from your phone
A company asked me if I am able to program an Android-App for their internal process but with small mobile-device-management capabilites. I'm aware of the "enable manual apk-installation"-checkbox inside of the Android-Settings-Menu. I think it opens additional security holes if it is permanently checked.
So easiset way is to send a SMS with an URL to this APK, enable checkbox, install the update and disable checkbox manually. A lot to do, to update a program.
Coming from Windows Mobile and Symbian I was able to program a Facade.exe which starts a download and replaces some signed parts. The Application signing of Windows Mobile and Symbian allows this.
Is this possible with Android(not rooted)? I read some articles that it is possible to implement own Markets(like Amazon is doing it). Is it possible to use some of those APIs for the purpose of doing an auto-update. Where are thoes APIs, I am not able to find them.
Is this a solution:
Programming a torch-app(there are thousands around), publishing it to the android market. But with a small button to activate the whole application with a secret password. Updates can be rolled out via android market functionality.
A complete MDM (mobile device management) is overkill.
Is this possible with Android(not rooted)?
Not readily. You can use the techniques used by the Sideload Wonder Machine, extracting the requisite bits out of the SDK to do sideloads via USB. However:
Your Facade.exe implies the user runs Windows.
This implies that the user has the adb drivers for their device for Windows.
Neither of those are guaranteed.
I read some articles that it is possible to implement own Markets(like Amazon is doing it). Is it possible to use some of those APIs for the purpose of doing an auto-update.
You can download whatever you want, such as an APK. You can tell Android to VIEW whatever you want, such as your APK. If you VIEW an APK (and have the right MIME type in your Intent), that will trigger an install or update. The user will be prompted about the install or update -- on an install, for example, it will give them the screen listing all the requested permissions.