Question

I am developing an android app for SPECIFIC brand of phones – that’s the project requirement not my decision.

So I need to be able to make the app available in the android marketplace only to those devices that are produced by that SPECIFIC manufacturer.

I don’t seem to be able to find how to do that.

Is it possible?

P.S.
I can retrieve the device make in the android code.
So I suspect that the market app should be able to filter by the device make as well.
I just don’t know if it actually does (would be great if it does).

Answer 1

You don’t need to filter your app based on device/manufacturer in the application code, instead you can do it from the android market developer console – https://market.android.com/publish/ just when you publish the app itself.

There is a ‘Supported Devices’ section on the developer console, which shows you a list of all the devices which can access the android market. You can then filter out devices or manufacturers that are not compatible with your app

This is the section in the main developer console:

Here you can exclude devices and/or manufacturers from being able to see your app

For more information please refer to the Device Availability help page which says:

The Device Availability dialog can help developers in two powerful
ways:

Understand which devices can find your app in Android Market

1. Device Availability provides a dynamic list of compatible devices based upon
   your manifest settings. For example, if your apk’s manifest specifies
   a large screen size, the console will reflect the supported devices
   that can find your app in Market.

2. You can also use the dynamic search
   feature to see the devices that your application will not be available
   to. You can search by manufacturer, the design name (E.g. “Passion”),
   or the actual public device name (E.g. “Nexus One”), to see if your
   manifest settings filtered a device. Filter problematic or
   non-compatible devices This feature provides a device-specific
   administration option to developers. When you add a device to the
   “Manually Excluded Devices” list, your app will not be available to
   that excluded device in Market. This is primarily intended to help
   developers provide the best user experience possible, by helping
   developers filter out devices known to have compatibility problems.