
Amazon’s Disruptive Android App Store Now Open To Developers — Full Details - atularora
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/05/amazon-android-app-store-2/
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rquirk
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.

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latch
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 setting the price for the
entire industry. I'd assume Amazon would almost always price an app lower than
developers would (and I doubt you'll be able to game the system by suggestion
for 2x what you would have otherwise), meaning an overall downward pressure in
app prices.

Would benefit users...seems impossible to tell whether it'll benefit
developers (or whether other aspects of the store will compensate them, such
as with increased sales).

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portman
_"Amazon gets to set the price on your app. Developers only get to recommend.
Certainly original."_

This is how the vast majority of retail products work. The manufacturer
suggests a retail price, but it is up to the retailer to determine what the
consumer ultimately pays. Software was sold this way for several decades.

So it strikes me as more "retro" than "original". Not that it's a bad thing --
I love the idea of Amazon split-testing my pricing, because it lets me focus
more on the app itself.

~~~
travisp
_The manufacturer suggests a retail price, but it is up to the retailer to
determine what the consumer ultimately pays._

This is quite different because in retail the wholesale cost is negotiated
between the manufacturer and retailer. Therefore, the price that the retailer
chooses to sell the product at to consumers does not change how much the
manufacturer makes (except indirectly, by affecting quantity sold and
therefore bought from the manufacturer). Coca Cola gets the same amount of
money per can if Walmart sells the cans for 20 cents each or $2 each.

In this case, Amazon essentially gets to choose not only the retail price, but
the wholesale price, except that the prices are at a fixed ratio to one
another and there is a price floor on the wholesale price based on the
suggested retail price you gave.

~~~
eclark
Wal-mart is a bad example to use here. They actually tell companies what they
are willing to pay; and everyone falls in line. Thats why some products you
buy at WalMart aren't as good a quality as they are at other places. Companies
make cheaper products to meet the demands of walmart.

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humbledrone
Finally! IMHO Google's Android Market is the weakest part of the platform
right now. I am fond of my Android phone but it really is a pain to find new
apps. AFAICT, the only way to really do it is from the handset, which is not
nearly as useful as being able to do it from my desktop machine. Hopefully the
existence of Amazon's marketplace will motivate Google to get their act
together. If not, maybe I'll just switch to the Amazon market.

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izendejas
Android has several issues and I agree that the market app sucks, so I use
appbrain. Give a try if you haven't already. It gives decent recommendations
and you can filter apps by hotness among other things.

~~~
Xuzz
I think the issue, though, is not if you (or other people on HN) use AppBrain:
it's if your customers are going to be able to find your app. I doubt that a
significant chunk of Android users actually use something like AppBrain, so a
pre-installed Amazon Appstore might help those people.

~~~
izendejas
I never implied otherwise (I agree), just spreading the word about appbrain.

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dazzla
No one notice that you must get all your apps through Amazon approval before
you can make them available for sale elsewhere?

 _b. Timing of Deliveries. ... You will deliver future Apps within 14 days
before the initial availability date you designate for the App (the “Initial
Availability Date”). The Initial Availability Date must be no later than the
first date you permit the App to be listed for pre-order or sale on any
Similar Service. ..._

EDIT: And updates as well. So no more releasing emergency break fixes.

~~~
dpcan
Wow, thanks.

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pitiburi
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...

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bostonvaulter2
It's not even going to be available in Europe at launch. It'll be USA only.

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erikstarck
What about free apps?

I would be OK with my $0.99 app costing $0.79 if Amazon thinks it sells more
but I wouldn't want my free app to suddenly cost money.

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dave1619
Amazon is a big player and has potential to disrupt the Android app economy.
Already their pricing mechanism is set up where they WILL undercut the Android
marketplace. That is why people will choose to buy and download Android apps
from Amazon. They have an easy payment system that millions have purchased
from. And they will work with carriers and manufacturers to get their Amazon
AppStore on as many phones as possible. Overall, I think this is good for
developers because more people will purchase apps. But the developers will
lose control over pricing and you'll have two markets - Android marketplace at
retail price and the Amazon appstore at discount price. Maybe people will
download free apps from google's marketplace, and paid apps from Amazon's. Not
as seamless as Apple's ecosystem, but people like a deal.

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goodscreens
Not sure this deserves the excitement of the headline. Amazon's been trolling
for mobile developers for months now, and there are many other app stores
doing the same.

The question is which ones will get enough traction with consumers to matter.

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Samuel_Michon
This might actually work.

One of the main reasons why Apple's App Store took off is that 100 million
customers already had an iTunes account with a credit card on file.

Amazon is one of the few other online retailers that has payment details for
100 million customers. Along with tons of retail experience, that gives it a
huge advantage over Google.

The only thing that worries me is that Amazon is still very US-centric. It
only has localized sites for Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, and
the United Kingdom. 8 countries is far too few. Compare that to the 91
countries where Apple has App Stores.

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harryf
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.

~~~
wmf
EC2 has had an app store (called "paid AMIs") for a while. It wouldn't make
sense to use the _same_ store for Android and EC2 given the platform
differences.

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krosaen
"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!

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

~~~
jrockway
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.

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

~~~
jrockway
Any company whose logo is the Death Star...

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corin_
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?

~~~
dpcan
Yes. Me. I have refrained from submitting my apps now for 2 reasons:

1) They say I have to get their approval 14 days before submitting new apps to
Similar Services

2) 20% of "List Price" that they can set???? I'm still confused on this, and I
get A LOT of sales from the Market, so I'm not interested in Amazon deciding
what's best for me.

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rmc
Interesting difference: Amazon set the price of the app, not you.

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davidw
Odd that they got to this before they released the Kindle SDK.

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blub
Maybe Amazon can do better device targeting aside from resolution and OS
version. Device name would be good...

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MichaelApproved
The best part is the code review. I hate the current _anything goes/permission
slip_ method.

~~~
dazzla
I don't think they will do a code review. They won't even have the source. I
should think the'll just do basic testing as Apple does.

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pedanticfreak
If you are guaranteed 20% of the list price, I forsee devs overpricing their
apps in the Amazon store to get a higher minimum payout.

Additionally, even if the best default price is much lower, it just makes
their apps look that much better when Amazon's app store says "50% off" or
"86% off."

~~~
dazzla
Your list price can't be more than anywhere else you sell it.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2071795>

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gcb
Just wait for devices with ONLY amazon store and no way to install anything
outside of it. Just like at&t+motorola screwed with the back flip in similar
ways.

And don't be foled, this is probably their monetization strategy, not a
consequence.

