[Rudism]

When I worked for a company that distributed malware (mostly desktop, but trying to break into mobile), we had relationships with a few people who would buy up android devices in bulk and then charge money to companies like ours to have our apps pre-installed. You could pay extra to have the app baked into a custom rom to make it non-removable.

The business model from our end is we'd find app developers who are willing to pay X amount per install (a conversion was usually tracked by the first time an end user opens the app), and then we pay Y amount per install to a shady phone re-seller to bake that app into the rom of their latest batch of phones. As long as X is sufficiently higher than Y to account for whatever our conversion rate is, we make our money back plus profits as the app developer pays us for conversions.

The shady re-sellers would take their phones with new roms and either sell direct to consumer or, in the case of the bigger guys, move those phones on to a big-box retailer.

[gcb0]

instead of paying 10? 30% of your sleazy revenue to the middle man, why not offer one payment to QA manager at the factory?

ironically, the same economics that make it worthwhile to manufacture in country X, also makes it very cheap to bribe in country X (e.g. the guy that would drive to eastern europe to buy pez dispensers at the factory for collectors)

[Rudism]

That's the kind of suggestion that would get you ahead quickly at a company like that (assuming you were also willing to personally follow through with it).