Amazon has expanded its Android Apps distribution network to more than 200 countries which includes Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, Papua New Guinea, Vatican City, American Samoa, Colombia, Greenland, Greece, Guam, Bulgaria, Norway, Latvia, New Zealand, Western Sahara, Spain, Uganda, Jersey, Cambodia, Cameroon and Bhutan.
While consumers will be able to access a large and growing catalog of apps and games directly from Amazon.com, developers will enjoy the extra audience, wide coverage and publicity for their apps. Moreover, developers will now be able to quote the price of their apps in Canadian Dollars (CAD) and Brazilian Reals (BRL) including the ability to generate revenue with the new Amazon Mobile Ads API which provides competitive eCPM rates.
According to official sources, developers will also be able to localize their apps for Brazil (Portuguese) and Canadian French and English in the near future. Amazon is also scheduled to release new Kindle Fire emulators with fast engine and the Amazon Mobile App SDK Eclipse Plugin.
"This is indeed a welcome move, sure to attract more developers and develop Amazon ecosystem more. Currently Amazon marketplace trails Google Playstore by a huge number. Expanding it has dual benefits to customers as well as Amazon", said a Software Quality Manager (who prefers not to be identified) based in San Francisco, USA.
He further said:
Amazon is only targeting Android because that is what is run on Kindles. Kindles are a crippled Android device for using amazon site, reading books, buying movies and songs. Moreover, you cannot run most of google play store apps on Kindle.
As of the time of this writing, Amazon has started to deposit 500 free Amazon Coins worth US $5 for US based Kindle Fire customers to enable them to spend on apps and games, which in turn enable Appstore developers to earn around 70% revenue share. It remains to be seen how Amazon Coins will be beneficial since it has received mixed reviews from various blogs and developers.
"Amazon Coins system is a terrible idea for consumers that could potentially cost them money down the road," says Garrett Murray, Creative Director of Karbon and iOS developer based in Los Angeles.
If you are a mobile app developer, you should download the SDK and distribute Apps via Mobile App Distribution Portal. You will find the complete list of all the 200 supported countries on the official blog.
Amazon refused to provide any comments regarding the above developments when InfoQ contacted over e-mail and twitter.