Amazon App Store: Rotten To The Core

http://shiftyjelly.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/amazon-app-store-rotten-to-the-core/

by neckbeard • 15 years ago

103 13 15 years ago

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danielhunt3• 15 years ago

That's absolutely incredible. It's also the first I'd heard about difficulties with the Amazon App Store (which, if I remember correctly, was opened to great fanfare about how developer & user friendly it was)

It does seem as though Android is an incredibly difficult platform to make money on though. This site has been littered with complaints (& plenty of iOS-vs-Android posts) about the dev process and lack of buyer activity.

I've actually found myself buying more than I otherwise would have, as a result of this sentiment. I want to support Android dev, and my credit card seems like the most logical way to do that.

Funnily enough, I've never even considered the Amazon market. I wonder what type of people do...

glimcat3• 15 years ago

A large part of the problem is the "race to the bottom" mentality. Users have been taught (by Apple) that software is $0.99 - if not free. You have to get massive user numbers before that becomes profitable, or find another way out of the trap.

Google's Market is pretty good, and there's always the option of self-distributing (Swype does this and it is still very popular).

I wouldn't use Amazon's App Store after reading things like this. It's less usable for customers and it takes a lot out of the developer's control. However, I've seen developers handling this very badly. For example, they get shocked by the way the Free App promotion works (starting with the fact that it's FREE) and then try to remove the app from the store and deny those customers all further access to updates and the ability to reinstall (which may be wanted reasonably often if you use custom firmware). I don't care if you sold it for $0 or if you got burned by Amazon, that's still a bit of a bait-and-switch.

danielhunt3• 15 years ago

The 'race to the bottom' on pricing diesn't seem to have hit the Android market in the same way as the iOS app store, from what I've seen.

I've not had any difficulty justifying paying more for an app/game, thanks mainly to the 15 minute refund window.

Bad handling on the developer's part is a valid complaint alright. I'm sure it's frustrating and painful to have to support potentially large numbers of users (note: not customers) for no gain whatsoever. That, along with the obviously lacking editorial control to respond to troubled users is a glaring red flag to steer clear of the system.

stonemetal• 15 years ago

I installed the amazon app store. Mostly because I was on amazon looking for a book and the free app of the day sounded interesting. I haven't actually looked at it since then. One thing to be aware of, apps from the Amazon app store have Amazon specific DRM if you uninstall their app store any apps gotten through it stop working.

Yhippa• 15 years ago

I imagine if Amazon had to reimburse developers for any non-zero amount this would be bad for business. It sounds like they're in this "free app a day" thing for the long-haul.

It also seems to me that what the developer is getting for this is a free day of advertising. So if someone tries your app who normally wouldn't have because it's prominently displayed on the top of the screen and they like it they might buy the next version or other apps from you.

hullo2• 15 years ago

He knew it was a bad deal, and that it didn't seem to work with their business model, but he did it any way (as pressured by other people in the company, which he admits). There's absolutely no surprises for them in this post, just regret. Sure, they didn't "realize" that it would garner so many free downloads, but that was always a chance, and in any case could have been quickly determined before agreeing by contacting other developers of featured apps.

The one piece of legitimate news here is that app of the day developers aren't being compensated at all, but that comes no where near justifying "rotten to the core", especially as they're all well aware of the terms when they agree to them.

He seems overly concerned with people who download the app just because they think it will trigger some micropayment to the developer, but that can't be a large number of people (developers paying attention to the launch terms of the market) and in any case are very unlikely to make up much of his support burden.

ericb• 15 years ago

I'm not sure that they knew it was a bad deal.

In the Apple store, if you got that many downloads and that kind of placement, the traffic from the various lists and high placement for 7 days would convert to many many paid sales over the following days.

shiftyjelly• 15 years ago

We suspected it was a bad deal, but tried it anyway as an experiment. Our blog post wanted to point that out, but more so we took issue with the fact that most people think Amazon pays 20% of the asking price even when an app is given away. Their agreement with devs says as much. No one seems to know that to be featured you have to agree to 0%. Again we agreed, but the secrecy is where our beef lies, we wanted to make that public.

Amazon App Store: Rotten To The Core

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