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Have developers of Swype keyboard ever told anywhere why they haven't added their app in Play Store yet? As Play Store is easiest way of installing and updating apps, it'd be nice..

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In short, they get their money from OEM sales. The beta is still relatively easy to get into though. – Bryan Denny♦ Apr 3 '12 at 12:59
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Not a technical reason, most hardware supports it. Part of it might be the fact that manufacturer installed versions would conflict with an "official" Play Store version, much like the Beta version. The PR response: "This eliminates confusion and allows us to deliver the best Swype experience possible..." – thunsaker Apr 3 '12 at 13:14
@above commenters - is there other versions of Swype that aren't Beta? – Celeritas Jan 6 at 9:46

closed as off topic by Matthew Read♦ Dec 3 '12 at 17:28

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1 Answer

up vote 7 down vote accepted

They have here but doesn't give a clear reason.

How can I buy Swype? / When will Swype be on the Android market?

We have considered a direct-download sales model, but there are two challenges to that approach:

  • Customer Support - Providing Swype users with the level of professional support they deserve is a priority for us. We're still a small (but quickly growing!) company, and we don't have the resources necessary to support a full end-user sales model. It is much more efficient for us to focus on improving Swype and to partner with large organizations like Samsung and T-Mobile who already have customer support structures in place.
  • Device integration - Swype isn't just an app; it's a keyboard - the most widely used piece of software on a device. It interacts with nearly every single application on the phone. As such, it's more like a system component than an application. For each device release we do a tremendous amount of testing and we always find issues due to the varying components - the OS version, the device hardware, the OEM UI implementation, etc. In addition, some features can't be implemented without an OEM's engineering assistance. We end up doing a large amount of work on each device to be sure that you have a great experience entering text using Swype. So, we appreciate your enthusiasm, but we are not ready to do direct-downloads at this time.
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