
Amazon Coins Will Be A Welcome Disruption To Android Developers - eplanit
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2013/02/05/amazon-coins-will-be-a-welcome-disruption-to-android-developers/
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bsimpson
Here's the Google Play developer agreement:

[https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-
agreeme...](https://play.google.com/about/developer-distribution-
agreement.html)

They changed the wording to be less clear, but I'm pretty sure you're only
supposed to use Google Wallet to collect payments. Even if the new language
doesn't state this as clearly as it used to, I'm sure they can go back to the
old language at a moment's notice if Amazon starts undercutting their payment
infrastructure (and the 30% it nets them).

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ktsmith
Amazon has its own app store so they are probably hopeful that even if google
doesn't allow this the devs will push out a second version which accepts the
coins. Amazon is selling a lot of Kindle Fire devices that don't hook into the
google ecosystem at all.

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rodly
I don't see how this is very disruptive. What are the benefits of proprietary
currency? That is, other than locking in your users to spending their money
only on your marketplace?

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jaredmcateer
Not only locking in your users but abstracting cost away. Consumers are very
sensitive to price changes to a product, e.g., Games are $0.99 now but $1.05 a
week later and $1.07 a month later, they will notice and possibly stop buying
or at least make less purchases. But if 100 amazon coins is $1 then $1.05 the
$1.07 but Angry Birds is being advertised as 99 amazon coins the entire time
then people are less likely to be put off from the sale.

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rodly
Isn't that bad for your users though? I would feel taken advantage of if I
learned that while the cost of a game has remained the same (99 tokens) but
the cost per token has gone up.

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jaredmcateer
It's a pretty tried and true system... packaging is a similar game reduce the
size of the product, but keep the same packaging size while keeping the same
price. You can definitely take it too far but on the whole consumers are much
more tolerant to these types of changes, most aren't even really that aware.

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erikpukinskis
How long until Amazon does Prime Instant Apps, where you pay one flat fee and
get unlimited access to all of the apps in their (limited) catalog?

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geetee
Please, why does everyone have to make up their own currency? I'm perfectly
content with using dollars. Facebook Credits, Microsoft Points, etc... how do
these do anything but confuse and corner the consumer?

Edit: Yes, I realize you're still able to use credit cards. For now. :)

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rogerbinns
Off the top of my head:

You get to make money on the float (money given, virtual currency not spent
yet). You can let others sell them (eg the iTunes cards in stores) as the
stores would otherwise have no incentive to sell or promote your points. You
can avoid tax issues since the conversion of money into points is when it
matters, not later on. You get user identity information so you can market at
them. You can start offering other products (eg stickers and toys). You can
get participation by people without credit cards. You can do micro
transactions - credit card fees kill them normally.

~~~
geetee
All great points for how this benefits Amazon, but not the consumer. It just
locks up your money in their ecosystem.

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rogerbinns
Well for a start the system has to work this way to be practical. If there was
a credit card transaction for every coin use then the minimums would have to
be a lot higher in order to take into account processing fees. You can't sell
something for 20c paid by credit card. Even a sale for $1 eats up a fair bit
in processing fees. But converting $20 into "coins" then allows the coin based
transactions to be for far smaller amounts (eg equivalent to 10c).

Obviously Amazon and other virtual currency providers need to give you a good
reason to get sucked in. They are largely successful. One approach that seems
to work is paying to save time. eg when playing a game you can unlock various
items and make progress just by playing the game for quite a while. Or you can
do a transaction to accelerate that such as getting an item immediately or
unlocking levels.

Americans also have a tendency to prefer fixed known in advance costs over
variable ones. Note for example how telephone service has been that way. If
you buy $20 worth of coins then you know you can never spend more than $20. On
the other hand if your credit card is on file and used in every transaction
then you could end up being dinged for far more than you expected.

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Samuel_Michon
The only real information in the entire article:

 _"Amazon have announced a virtual currency for their Android App Store, [...]
targeted at buying applications. [...] Amazon Coins is a one way street, to
‘load up’ an account that can be used to buy applications in the Amazon App
Store."_

The rest is just the author's wishlist.

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hobs
This would be really cool if you could do something like contribute to AWS and
make e-coins to then contribute to the marketplace. Obviously this is probably
technically infeasible for most types of work that AWS does on a daily basis.

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jusben1369
I _think_ this is classic monetary policy to stimulate an economy. They're
going to greatly expand the money supply. Producers will respond to the
assumption that consumers will be flushed with additional currency to expand
production to meet that demand. So Amazon is playing Central Bank to its own
economy in essence and trying to increase production. In this case that extra
production will draw in additional consumers and they can step out having
primed the pump initially but hopefully having left a positive cycle.

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benologist
How is doing the same thing others have been doing for years disruptive?

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ww520
Amazon does have more experience working with customers. Hopefully this really
pushes Android app purchase to the next level.

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alayne
I don't think Amazon in general is a welcome force in the Android world and I
doubt many people enjoy submitting apps to both Google Play and Amazon. They
are contributing to fragmentation of the platform.

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Steko
I think the opposite is actually true. Competition has forced Google to step
up it's game lest Samsung et al replace their ecosystem with Amazon's.

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alayne
I agree that Android is an evolving comedy.

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digitalengineer
_"Google Play gift cards are available in the United States in the amounts of
$10, $15, $25 and $50"._ I'd like to see Google gift cards world wide (like
Apple). No way I'm providing my credit card data to that Wild West store.

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re_todd
Sounds like another step towards a walled garden.

