Android: Possible to create a small app-plugin-framework?

Question

With iPhone, creating your own AppFramework is made impossible by the fact that Apple won't let your apps download binaries. One can understand this as it would potentially mean that people could set up their own App Stores (however unlikely it may sound).

Is there anyone who knows of any such restrictions for Android?

Just FYI: What we want to achieve is this: A small app that you run that can act as host for any apps that we want the user of it to be able to download and run. The reason is that we want to be in control of ALL apps our customers run and be able to upgrade them separately while they only need to download and install ONE app from us, that can potentiall host 100s of functions. As stated, this is not possible with iPhone, the question is if it is possible with Android or if there are similar restrictions there i.e. only deploy App from some Android Store, not allowing for binaries to be executed by apps etc? Thanks.

Answer 1

There are no such restrictions for Android as a platform.

However, if you do build a new "Android App Store", you cannot upload it to the Android Market itself (the terms and conditions prohibit third-party markets). You can still upload it to other markets, or make it downloadable from the Web.

The Developer Content Policy describes what is allowed on Google's Android Market. This policy does not represent the whole of the Android platform, just the Market app.