September 28th, 2010 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Distribution, Platforms: AndroidOS | No Comments »
While Amazon has been publishing digital content for a while, the company seems willing to expand into additional platforms, starting with publishing apps for the Android platform.
Such a move could be a great thing for developers of Android apps as Amazon is able to offer a plethora of billing methods and has a huge, committed consumer base it can address. The Amazon app store would also be a great alternative to companies that don’t license the Android Market from Google.
The business model is a bit weird as TC mentions. “For each sale of an App, we will pay you a royalty equal to the greater of 70% of the purchase price or 20% of the List Price as of the purchase date (70/30 is standard, this 20/80 split is somewhat odd and confusing)”. This is probably to avoid developers selling their apps cheaper on competitive channels. Amazon will also charge $99 for entry into its store, which might lock out bedroom-based developers. Amazon also obligates developers to update the app on the Amazon channel at the same time as any other channel the app is available at, which can be confusing if you are updating your iOS app with GameCenter support. Finally, Amazon can overrule your app pricing approach. This means Amazon can downgrade the pricing if they like as well as set other terms for it. At launch, the Amazon app store will be available only to US consumers.
