How to provide your own LocationProvider on Android?

Question

Does anyone know how to provide your own LocationProvider and publish it to the system, so other apps may fetch a reference to it from the LocationManager?

Answer 1

It cannot be done.

The problem is that only OEMs are allowed to install a new location provider. A third-party developer cannot grant to his/her application the permission required to install a new location provider (android.permission.INSTALL_LOCATION_PROVIDER).

See the answer of Dianne Hackborn (Android framework engineer) in this thread:

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/android-developers/OvCcdvO6jZY/discussion

To install a new location provider, you should develop a whole new firmware (like http://www.cyanogenmod.com/ ), insert your new location provider in this firmware and install all of this stuff o the user's phone.

See this SO thread, as well: Why are these permissions being refused?

All of this because of security concerns.