This could make it easier and cheaper to develop higher quality applications for Android.

The problem isn't just on the sell-side of outsourcing. Presumably the uninformed, inexperienced, not-design-savvy, people buying cheap outsourcing are happy with the results or they wouldn't have accepted the sludge they got. The buy side needs help with design, understanding capabilities, code quality, product management fundamentals, etc.

The fee for the certification is around $100, which was said to be the filter which prevented frivolous apps from being submitted to the App store. Shouldn't that help?

People still pay $1000+ for someone to make an Android app of questionable quality for them. A one time fee of $100 is nothing by comparison.

>People still pay $1000+ for someone to make an Android app of questionable quality for them.

And if that Android App actually makes money, then you now have leverage to charge a high hourly rate to fix the questionably-made app.

Sounds like a win for you.

intentionally bad programmers don't need the certification, just to pay the standard $25 play store fee. I think this program will help the quality of play store iff they can get a lot of people through without sacraficing content, such that their certificates actually matter in the market.