New Android OEM regulations in India replace “requirements” with “revenue sharing”.

Google is forced to rethink how it licenses Android in yet another country: India. And although all these arrangements with manufacturers are always a big secret, we learn more about them from time to time through various leaks. The latest came over the weekend from Cuba Wojciechowski, which outlines how manufacturers can now sell Android in India compared to the rest of the world.

Android has an incredible 97 percent market share in India and is the second largest smartphone market in the world after China with 600 million devices. About three weeks ago, Google lost an antitrust case in India when the Competition Commission of India (CCI) issued new rules on how Google can link Android to other Google services. The CCI also fined Google $161 million—about five hours of Alphabet’s $282 billion in annual revenue, or about 25 cents for each of India’s 600 million phones.

India’s new competition rules are very similar to what the EU set years ago, so much so that Google actually accused India of “plagiarism”in its antitrust ruling, saying CCI “largely copied the European Commission’s decision.”Google’s blog post on the ruling outlines some of the changes, such as OEMS will be able to license individual Google apps, the default search engine will be chosen via a voting screen, Android forking will be allowed, and that users will be able to choose their payment provider.

However, if they choose to use IMADA, they will only be able to release a particular variant of the device in India. If they choose MADA instead, they will be able to release the exact same device (with identical software) to most of the world. pic.twitter.com/BNIF6lJeXQ

— Cuba Wojciechowski ? (@Za_Raczke) February 18, 2023

Google’s licensing rules for OEMs are set out in the Mobile App Distribution Agreement (MADA), which all OEMs must sign in order to license the Play Store or other Google apps. The Wojciechowski thread describes some of the changes in this document. Regular MADA currently requires merging 11 Google apps: Play Store, Search, Chrome, Drive, Gmail, Meet, Maps, YouTube Music, Google Photos, Play Movies and TV and YouTube. There are also “placement”requirements for the default home screen first page layout, such as having the Google search bar front and center and the Google apps folder on the home screen. In India, you can shorten this list to the Play Store if you have a license from Google. (If you don’t need the Play Store,

All the various monopoly regulations around the world have fragmented this document, and now Wojciechowski says that while the MADA document applies to most of the world, the IMADA document applies to India, the EMADA document applies to the EU and the TMADA document ” applies to Turkey. The rules are different all over the world. Google’s tactic seems to be to say that anyone who signs these region-specific MADA contracts will have to limit that software build to that region and bear the costs of supporting the additional software build. They can also just sign the regular worldwide MADA document which includes all of the old Google linking rules and have a single software build for multiple regions.

Under the old-school MADA, Google provided Android for free to OEMs and recouped Android development costs through Play Store and Google Ads fees from things like Search and Maps. This model is so lucrative that Google will share some of that ad revenue with OEMs, effectively paying them to use Android instead of other operating systems. In the EU, OEMs that choose to remove Google services will instead charge an upfront Android fee of up to $40 per device and will not receive any revenue sharing.

It looks like India will have a similar revenue sharing plan to keep everyone in line. Wojciechowski writes about the “Indian Hosting Agreement”which offers a “per app reward”for any Google app that OEMs choose to include. So, as in the EU, antitrust rulings may try to eliminate Google’s “requirements”for Android, but two very unequal “choices”for OEMs take their place. They can either follow the old Google rules and get paid for using Android, or they can’t follow the rules and pay for Android out of pocket, hoping to make up for that income in some other way.