We want to distribute our application in China, but we currently have a BIG issue.
The application requires Google Play Services installed. It normally works well: the user is prompted a dialog, and the brought to the Google Play application where he can install the Google Play Services application.
And in China? When an Android phone is bought in mainland China, it usually does not have Google Play installed. And it stays that way, users usually never download the Google Play application (see here and there).
So what we are trying to do is: when we detect that the user does not have Google Play installed, we send him to an URL where he can download the Google Play Services APK directely. But - as expected - we could not find stable url where the apk is available for download.
Did any of you encountered the same kind of problems? How did you resolve it? If not do you have ideas, suggestions? Any help would be much appreciated :)
Thank you!
This is a late Answer, and contained in a comment I already posted to an answer posted by @johlo, but to clarify things I'll write here what we did that "worked" in the hope that it helps somebody. Don't hesitate to comment for clarifications.
I actually found a very ugly way of installing google play services: if the user does not have google play we use an URL to download the Google Play Services APK.. That's the best we could do ..