Amazon green-lights in-app purchasing for Android Amazon has enabled in-application billing for Android apps sold through its US Appstore, though it's reserving the right to control the amount punters end up paying. Amazon's In-App Purchasing API has been in beta for a while, but now any application can throw up an "insert coin to continue" dialogue linked directly to the …
Hardly surprising it hasn't proven successful when we still can't do it !!!! Only the Fruity crowd are eagle enabled, the rest of us outside of the US are stuck with no eagle and no way to get rid of the bloomin ads either.
Love the way so many companies bang on about being global, when they are as global as the world series of baseball :(
There is no out cry from the Reg crowd? I thought the way Apple treated developers was poor, specifically with regard to pulling the apps, etc, but now Amazon reserve the right to charge whatever they like for your app? That you produced?
So basically if I would normally want to sell for £1.99, I would expect to get £1.39 of that, but to guarantee that I would have to ask Amazon to sell it for £7.00?
What if Amazon say no we dont think its really worth that amount?
Amazon are treating their devs as badly as Apple. Worse in fact since devs don't even control how much the app sells for. They can set a list price but Amazon can discount it all the way down to 20% of that. But you can't put your list price up to compensate because the terms prevent you from selling the app for more than it appears on other stores.
And Amazon charge $100 a year and take their sweet time putting apps on the store and updates.
I don't see much reason for most devs to bother with it at all really when the standard Android appstore gives far greater control and a lot less hassle.
You simply missed the bitching, back when the store launched and the free app royalty rape was launched ;)
Since using Amazon is completely optional there's not much interest in rehashing it. Using Apples store is unavoidable so the bitching will continue, Amazon control too little to matter so far.
BOOO HOOO!
You want to sell it in my shop, you can't dictate its selling price! Is that concept too hard for devs to understand? Or are you just too greedy to care?
Amazon's model makes good business sense, till someone else tries to kill it, then gets hauled up by the DoJ (Apple and ebooks??).
"You want to sell it in my shop, you can't dictate its selling price! Is that concept too hard for devs to understand? Or are you just too greedy to care?"
When Amazon can discount their hard work all the way down to 1/5th of its value of course they care. It's nothing about greed and all about fairness. Just because it's software does not mean there is no material cost to producing and supporting that software.
While I personally think retailers should have some latitude in pricing products they absolutely should not be permitted to discount with impunity like this.
I got the email a couple of days back. I have several apps in the 50k downloads range, one of which has in-app payments.
Currently all my APK's are the same, I don't compile separately for Amazon. I'm simply not prepared to compile different versions for different markets, it's not worth my time. 99% of my market is via Google Play store, Amazon downloads barely register on the radar.
All this means is my apps will be out of date on Amazon, better than nothing I suppose for me, but not great for the end users. But then they were silly enough to buy a Kindle Fire in the first place.
You may not bother, but your competition will.
7-10million already sold...5.5 million last quarter - and that just the 1st round in 2011 of Kindle Fires.
If your too lazy, someone else wont be.
Sure Amazon can discount, but they loose money from their 30% as well, and they have to fund and pay for the actual marketplace from their cut. Also do you $5.00 time 10,000 or $0.50 times 5 million? If you are a good developer having Amazon feature your app as a promotion at discounted prices should give you a change to gain new market share.... you can always charge full price for the next version to much larger base...if your app is worth the money.
Not saying that I think its the best model, but its not a completely unreasonable one, and though I may not be buying a fire anytime soon, I know people that have and love them, and if I were a developer I would certainly be including them in plans as they will represent a significant portion of the app market in the foreseeable future.
Hmm was going to write a post about this not being a bad thing, as the decreased price will come alongside increased advertising/prominence of your app and what's better 100 user paying £5 each, or 1000 users paying 50p each?
Then a bell went off in my head. Wasn't there an article about this sort of thing and developers closing down because of support costs. No point having a great app if you get a bad rep for not supporting it.
Maybe over time the developer will be promised more, just so the amazon store can attract the kind of devs that think things through?
Surely it depends on your total market capacity. So your app may have a possible
total user base of say 10k on each market place.
So in first 3 months:
On Google:
You sell your app for £3, and manage to sell to 3k without any adverts, and make £6300.
In iTunes:
You sell your app for £3, and manage to sell to 3k without any adverts, and make £6300.
In amazons:
You can't ask to sell for more than £3, and they can sell for £1, but they advertise more for you, and get you double the number of buyers at 6k. You make £4.2k.
Your potential income from Apple/Google is more than that from Amazon.
All theoretical, but maybe you get my point.
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