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Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

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21–30 of 62 posts

Re: Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

#21
So far I've spoken to a copuple of different devs who, when I asked what they thought of Amazon setting the price, said "well there's a field for me to enter 'list price', so what are you talking about?"

Are a lot of people going to miss that detail and assume that the list price they set is what it will be sold for?

Re: Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

#22
post #13
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The nice thing is that Amazon can basically continuously and automatically A/B test different price points for each app. Drop the price by a penny, is revenue better than projected over an hour? Ok, drop it by another penny, etc.

Ten years ago Amazon was burned by price testing. This seems an appropriate time to try again. http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/51392/Amazon_apologiz...

It might have been bad PR but you can bet they've never stopped testing.

Re: Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

#23
post #2

Would the various "markets" inter-operate? Does the device sold with operator firmware have access to the Amazon Android Market?

Yes. As with any real computing device, you can install software from anywhere. In Android, you have to check a checkbox first, but that's all.

Not necessarily... AT&T blocks non-Market apps on their phones.

Re: Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

#25
Wonder if Amazon are also considering selling apps on AWS via this appstore?

Would easily work for EC2 images but might also work in the "platform as a service" space like the sort of thing Heroku is doing. Or just "buy a blog" e.g. wordpress can sell via the appstore and it's running on the AWS cloud.

Re: Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. As with any real computing device, you can install software from anywhere. In Android, you have to check a checkbox first, but that's all.

Not necessarily... AT&T blocks non-Market apps on their phones.

Any company whose logo is the Death Star...

Re: Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

#27
Free for the first year, $99 fee waived. Nice. Reading through the agreement though, there are a few interesting things.

1. You have to provide Amazon with all software that is yours on the Market 2. You have to add Amazon specific DRM to the apps you add to Amazon and cannot use any other DRM 3. There are privacy requirements on embedded advertising 4. The parentheses in the agreement are not well balanced! There are a lot of missing closing )s.

So you cannot pick and choose which of your software goes on Amazon and which on the Market. The DRM means you would at the very least need 2 versions of your software if you use Google's licence server "DRM" - one with Google's technology and another version with Amazon's.

I'd say that if you go the DRM route, you'd want to use Amazon or the Market, but not both. If Amazon turns out to be more popular with paying customer this could really have an impact. Especially the "all your Apps belong to us" requirement - I think having a free-with-adverts version of an App on the Market and a paid version on Amazon is forbidden under this agreement.

Policing rogue advertising is good, though I doubt Amazon will really kick anyone off for using AdMob or any of the big players.

Also, #4 shows that the agreement was not written by a Lisp programmer. It makes reading parts of the agreement tricky.

Re: Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

#28
International developers still get robbed. Coding from Europe, i should give USA 30 per cent to sell my app to European public? And that means, 30 per cent to Amazon, from what is left 30 per cent to USA, from what is left 20 per cent to my government..... ridiculous...

Re: Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

#29
"So why, aside from these pricing differences, would consumers want to use this Amazon App Store at all? There are a few answers to that question.

The first is that there are manufacturers making Android devices that decide not to partner with Google to offer the official suite of Google applications (including Android Market)."

The market is available independent of google apps, the only bar required to get the android market is to show that the device you are shipping meats API compatibility, which I assume Amazon will want to enforce as well (who wants to distribute an app to a device that has hacked android to the point of API incompatibility?).

That said, this looks cool, and at the very least this will light a fire under the asses of the android market team!

Re: Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details

#30
post #6

Wow..Amazon gets to set the price on your app. Developers only get to recommend. Certainly original. If this takes off it could have a significant impact on application pricing for more than just Android devices. iTunes put it in people's heads that a song is worth $1. Amazon is working hard at saying that a book is worth $10. This is the same model - by setting the price for individual apps, Amazon is going to be se…

I have a feeling Amazon is better at pricing my app than I am.
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