Here's what you missed last week on the Amazon Developer blog.

Go Live when You Want To

Amazon has recently added the ability to specify the date and time you would like your app to go live on the Amazon Appstore. This gives you the ability to coordinate your app release on Amazon with releases on other stores and in conjunction with any press or social media launch events you may wish to plan.

How Does It Work?

You start by completing the new app submission or the app update submission as you normally would, but make sure that you enter the date and time you want your app to go live in the Availability & Pricing section (see image below). Times are shown in Pacific Standard Time.

Then you simply submit your app as usual.

What Happens Next?

Submitted

When you first click the ‘Submit’ button, your app will display the status “Submitted” for up to 60 minutes until we kick off testing for your app.

Under Review

Typically, within 60 minutes of submission, your app will enter testing regardless of the launch date you have chosen. This lets us notify you of any issues prior to your launch event. While your app is being tested, your app status will show as “Under Review”.

Approved

If your app passes testing, your app will be staged on our servers, waiting for the date and time you specified. During this waiting time, your app will show an “Approved” status in the Developer Portal.

Live

At the time of your launch, we complete the publishing process to make your app available in the Amazon Appstore. We work hard to complete the testing process as quickly as possible, and our goal is to publish at least 90% of apps within 60 minutes of the time specified. Once publishing is complete, your app will have the “Live” status in the developer portal.

You can edit the launch date and time any time prior to your app going “Live” in the Appstore.

What You Can Do Now

• Specify a date and time for new launches and updates in the Amazon Developer Portal
• Join the conversation in our LinkedIn group, Amazon App Developer

Mike Hines

@MikeFHines

Founded in 2011 Pixowl, Inc is a mobile games developer headquartered in San Francisco, CA. With the success of its four iOS games, The Sandbox, Greedy Grub, Doodle Grub and Safari Party, Pixowl has made a name for itself in casual mobile games.  Their game, The Sandbox, is a unique world-building and crafting game in 2D with touch controls and access to over 150+ physics elements. Players can craft amazing worlds, create pixel art, chiptune music, electric circuits or just play with physics.

I had a chance to sit down with Sebastien Borget, COO and Co-Founder at Pixowl and ask him about Pixowl’s experiences porting The Sandbox to the Kindle Fire, what type of success Pixowl has seen in the Amazon Appstore, and what it was like implementing many of the APIs available in the Amazon Mobile App SDK.

Betting on the Amazon Appstore pays off

“We have built with Amazon an improved version of The Sandbox which is deeply integrated with Amazon’s GameCircle service for a more seamless experience on Kindle Fire.” – Sebastien, Pixowl

Pixowl was able to submit The Sandbox early on in the Amazon Appstore’s launch.  “We were present at an event organized by Amazon UK to present other developers success stories on the Amazon Appstore.  While it was still in an early stage of maturity we were really impressed by the performance the apps had already seen there. This convinced us we had to be among the early movers and adopt a cross-platform strategy fitted for each partner.  Now, we couldn’t be happier about this decision as the Amazon team has held all of its promises and has been over achieving for us.” recalls Sebastien.

For the Kindle Fire version of The Sandbox, Pixowl decided to integrate Amazon GameCircle allowing a more seamless experience.  GameCircle is a free, cross-platform API from Amazon that provides everything you need to implement achievements, leaderboards, and saved game syncing across any device, regardless of mobile platform. Once you integrate GameCircle, customers can play and interact with other gamers across any mobile device.

“Amazon is proving that Android users could be as engaged with games as on other platforms and made it worth considering alternative distributions models, with  a huge revenue potential.” – Sebastien, Pixowl

“For us, the decision making process was relatively easy. On a business perspective, we wanted to make sure that the platform had enough of our core audience: kids and casual players, from 5 years old to 20+ .  On the technical side, we had to check what level of compatibility with existing Kindle models was, evaluate the adaptations required and make sure we could provide the best game experience on the devices.” says Sebastien.

Quick porting process and easy Amazon Mobile App API integration

Pixowl already had an existing Android version of The Sandbox so moving to the Amazon Appstore was relatively quick.  “The overall porting process took us 2 weeks maximum including development and testing. We are developing in C++ with Cocos2DX and everything worked almost seamlessly.” says Sebastien.

The Sandbox follows the “freemium” monetization model; a free download to all Amazon customers the games utilizes Amazon’s In-App Purchasing API to unlock additional campaigns of level or acquire elements faster.

The API offers a completely Amazon hosted checkout experience to customers and integrates fully with their Amazon account.  They can choose to utilize their 1-Click purchase settings as well as Amazon Coins which now work on both Android and Kindle Fire devices.

According to Pixowl the Amazon Appstore represents 5% of the total downloads volume from all Android marketplaces, but over 20% of their total Android revenues. Some days, it’s could be as high as 50%!   “That’s very close to the performance we’re seeing with Apple iOS!” says Sebastien.

According to Pixowl Amazon is proving that Android users can be as engaged with games as on other platforms.  It made it worth Pixowl considering alternative distributions models, with a huge revenue potential.  “Success is no longer determined just by the amount of downloads, but by their quality. Go for the full experience with Amazon.  It’s really worth it!” says Sebastien.

You can check out The Sandbox in the Amazon Appstore here.  You find out more about the Amazon In-App Purchasing API here and the cross-platform GameCircle API here.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Today, we released the new developer portal that improves the look and feel of the site and helps you save time when planning, building, and submitting applications to the Amazon Appstore. 

The portal refresh is designed to make it easy for you to:

1. Get Started: If you have an Android app, you can simply drop your APK in our updated testing widget to get Appstore compatibility test results in just seconds. Once your app is ready, you can create a free developer account and submit it using the Developer Console.

2. Access the Latest Amazon APIs: Download the free Amazon Mobile App SDK for access to APIs and services that can enhance your apps and games, help you monetize them, and engage your audience across Android and iOS platforms.

3. Find the Content that Matters: The new site includes a wide variety of support resources to help you through the development process including documentation, development tools, marketing tips, promotional tools, videos, case studies, blog posts and one of my favorites, a schedule of upcoming training events.

Top Enhancements

There are many improvements in the new portal, and here are a few stand-outs:

    1. Streamlined App Submission

One thing that you’ll notice right away is how easy it is to check an existing Android .apk for compatibility with the Amazon Appstore. Just drag your .apk to the updated testing widget on the Home page and get results in seconds. If your app is ready to go (as most are), you can start the app submission process directly from the results page.

    2. Site-wide Search

The site-wide search tool in the top navigation bar can quickly get you to the page you are looking for. Just submit the term you are looking for and it will search the site for results.

    3. Complete list of APIs (with cross-platform compatibility notation)

There is now a page where you can find all of the Amazon Appstore APIs, and see their compatible platforms. In the case of the Analytics API for example, you can see that it is compatible with apps sold on iOS, the Google Play Store, and the Amazon App Store.

Also, behind each pretty icon is a page full of documentation, sample code and plug-in information for each service. (I spend a lot of time on these pages when I code.)

    4. Dedicated page for Game Developers

We introduced a page dedicated to the tools and services that Game developers will find most helpful, including game engine plug-ins and cross-platform APIs that can help you maximize revenue from In App Purchasing. (you can still use these even if you’re not a game dev.)

    5. Dedicated pages for HTML5 and iOS developers

Speaking of cross-platform, If you’re not an Android developer we made some changes to become more relevant to you, such as giving HTML5/web app developers their own resources page as well as building a page specifically for iOS developers who may want to take advantage of some of our Analytics tools, A|B Testing tools, or game services.  

    6. Resources for PC and Mac game developers

Even if you don’t program for mobile devices, we still have some great promotion programs.  These are detailed on the Mac and PC page to help you submit your game to Amazon and get noticed in our Digital Games and Software store, Indie Games store and Free-to-Play Store.

    7. Community resources and a calendar of events

We created a Community space, which provides you with access to our Developer Blog and Forums, and lists upcoming events and webinars, and lets you catch up on the latest tech news gathered from periodicals and blogs around the world. Check out the list of events and webinars here.

    8. A Resources section (including how-to videos)

This section contains links to development tools, marketing tips, and promotional programs. Also in this section are and learning resources, which include two of my favorite resources in the site: First is the one-stop-shop for all of the how-to videos, webinar videos, and case-study videos we’ve produced. The second is the Documentation page, which contains easy links to API documentation, Kindle Fire info, dev environment setup help, app submission tips, and even marketing tips.  

What hasn’t changed?

The Developer Console (the interface you use to work on app submission forms) has not changed its functionality; it has just been re-skinned. So you can add A|B Experiments, enter new IAP items and other dev console tasks just like you always have.

Take a look at our new developer portal as you build and distribute your apps with Amazon.

The Amazon Appstore for Android is spreading a little holiday cheer this week, offering a $5 credit to anyone who downloads the latest version of the Amazon Appstore and uses it to buy a mobile app or game from Christmas Eve through Saturday. The credit is good for the future purchase of any apps, games, or in-app items in the Amazon Appstore.

With millions opening brand new phones and tablets this season, there’s never been a better time to publish your mobile app or game on Amazon. The Amazon Appstore runs on all Android devices, and now customers will have an additional $5 to spend there on the great mobile content they love. Submit your app today to make sure it’s available for purchase when customers want to redeem their credit.

The Amazon Appstore continues to see tremendous growth, and in fact selection has more than doubled in 2013 over 2012, offering more than 100,000 apps as a result of a growth of 95 percent in app submissions. This momentum would not be possible without the many developers who build apps and games for folks using Kindle Fire and other Android devices. Think of our ecosystem kind of like a pizza parlor.

In just two years since shipping its first Kindle Fire, the Amazon Appstore has established a platform that allows developers to reach millions of Amazon customers worldwide. Amazon also offers a unique discovery and marketing engine through Free App of the Day, Game Connect and other Amazon channels (like recommendations and emails).

At the Amazon Appstore, we test all apps before we publish them, and we’ve seen a fair number of PhoneGap apps fail with Timeout Errors. We have also seen Timeout Errors mentioned on StackOverflow so I thought I’d share some of the more successful tips I’ve seen floating around the community boards.

One, from Google Groups:

If you are spending a lot of time loading resources from local stores or the web when you get your timeout error, try increasing the loadUrlTimeoutValue to 60000 in onCreate:

super.setIntegerProperty("loadUrlTimeoutValue", 60000);

Two, from StackOverflow:

It may be a version specific issue in some cases.  If you are seeing this in cordova 2.7.0 and it’s not a resource loading issue, try going to back to cordova 2.4.0 or upgrade to 2.9

Three, from StackOverflow:

If loading the URL is still being difficult, try importing org.apache.cordova.* and calling Config.getStartUrl() in onCreate.

public void onCreate() {                            
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);         
super.loadUrl(Config.getStartUrl());
}

While not a universal elixir (as you can see from this thread), the above fixes have helped some of our developer community and might help you too.

Today we have a video interview with the executive leadership of Tre Sensa (http://www.tresensa.com/) a NYC based game development and distribution company that optimizes games for the mobile web. In this video, they talk about their business and the importance of HTML5 in their goal to deliver apps to as many screens as possible. They also discuss their experience developing HTML5 apps for Amazon mobile devices as well as a talk about how they came to use Amazon Web Services to support their mobile gaming applications. 

We hope you enjoy this video interview with TreSensa. 

Just in time for the holidays, millions of customers can now purchase Android applications from the Australian Appstore and Brazilian Appstore using their own local currency. Available in nearly 200 countries since May, the Amazon Appstore now allows developers to price their apps in Australian dollars or Brazilian reais, in addition to the other currencies already supported. There’s even a new localization option for Brazilian Portuguese so you can make your app that much more relevant to customers in Brazil. And, the Australian Appstore is also accessible to Kiwis, so customers in New Zealand can download the best local and global apps, too.

Being able to offer your apps for sale in the local currency of Australia and Brazil means less friction for customers in two of the most important global app marketplaces. Brazil is the largest app marketplace in Latin America and is growing faster even than the US, according to a recent report by Distimo¹, which also ranks the Australian app marketplace #6 in the world in terms of revenue. Despite Australia’s considerably smaller installed base, only the US, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and China surpass it for app purchases.

In addition, you can publish any Android app on the Amazon Appstore, which includes those running on Kindle Fire OS. In fact, more than 75% of the Android tablet apps we’ve tested just work on Kindle Fire without additional development. Publish your Android app on Amazon and it automatically becomes eligible to be featured on our web storefront and to be included in search results and recommendations shown on product detail pages. Once your app or game is available in our store, you can also promote its availability by linking to it directly.

So, don’t miss this opportunity to monetize your apps and games in time for the holiday rush. In 2012, we saw a 50% increase in the number of app downloads during Thanksgiving week as compared to an average week. During ‘Digital Week’ in 2012 (the week after Christmas), customers purchased and downloaded 600% more apps than an average week during the year. Submit your Android app to our store today and let us help you increase your international exposure in time for the holidays.

Over the last couple of years since our Amazon Appstore launch, we’ve talked with many unique and inspiring developers. Along the way we’ve learned quite a bit and wanted to pass some of those learnings back to our developer community. So to that end, we are excited to continue our Developer Spotlight series. This series will highlight developers’ experiences building apps, ranging from what inspires them and how they’re delivering innovation to consumers to the results they’re achieving.

For today’s spotlight, we’re excited to chat with one of the co-founders of ZeptoLab, a global gaming company whose game Cut the Rope has been an instant success since its debut in October of 2010. The game remains a top app throughout mobile markets, browsers and desktops, and has been downloaded more than 400 million times to date.

Below is our interview with Zeptolab co-founder and CTO, Efim Voinov.

Why did you start Zeptolab?

Creating games was a hobby for my brother and me since early childhood. We’ve started with the games for ZX Spectrum in the early 90s, switched to PalmOS in the 2000s, and jumped into iOS and Android development since the first days of those platforms. At that time we already had experience in several gaming companies, and thought it was the right time to start something on our own. The new platforms offered exciting opportunities for independent developers, and we believed they shouldn’t be missed.

When did you start Android development for Cut the Rope?

The original version of Cut the Rope was released for iOS only, since there were only two of us developing full-time, and we had to concentrate on a single platform. After the game was out, we started to receive feedback from the players that they would like it on other platforms, and Android was the most requested one. Once the company had grown enough, we started developing it and about eight months after the release of the original we had the Android version. The version for Amazon Appstore was released at the same time, and required very little adaptation.

What changes did you need to build into the game to make it available for the Amazon Appstore?

Since we released Cut the Rope, we’ve created other titles, like Cut the Rope: Time Travel, Cut The Rope: Experiments, and Pudding Monsters. All of our titles are available in the Amazon Appstore. The process of porting the app for Amazon is very easy; we simply swap out billing API’s for the Amazon API for billing, which is something we do for all platforms we sell our app on. In addition, we are using GameCircle to handle leaderboards and achievements for games in the Amazon Appstore, which we have built in.

What’s it like to work with Amazon?

We think the Amazon API’s are very well thought through, the implementation is efficient and it’s easy to find information on how to use them. Having this ease of use is very important to us because we have lots of different versions of the games and really value the quick turnaround time to support games. In cases where we need more information the documentation level for Amazon API’s is very good and compared to others it’s in many cases above the competition. We don’t have to communicate with the Amazon team a lot in terms of understanding how to implement.

We also really appreciate your developer relations team. Having these relationships with the team helps us plan for the future, so we can plan for our business and consider the best way to implement new API’s and improvements into our games. The level of technical features being brought to market is impressive.

What are you looking at doing next with the Amazon Appstore?

In our current titles we are actively using IAP and this is proving to be quite successful for us in the Amazon Appstore. They currently bring us more than 40% of our revenue, and this figure is growing. In general, our cumulative income in the Amazon Appstore is doubling every year, and we are looking forward to increasing this trend in the future. With the latest release of the Mobile Associates API, we are looking at various opportunities to sell physical goods for our games.

Do you have any tips and tricks for developers building mobile games and applications?

One of the things that we learned is that it’s really important to minimize the routine tasks during development, and optimize the process as much as possible. That’s why we have invested quite a lot of time into our own framework, which includes different tools that automate various tasks. For example, we have an animation system, which allows us to automatically export animations created in the Adobe Flash directly to the game.

We also try to keep things as abstract as possible while designing a native OpenGL application for the Android platform. We try not to rely too heavily on a list of pre-defined resolutions, even if the list is extensive, because hardware specs are always changing. Instead, we try to invent a system for adopting current graphics to any imaginary screen proportion and only switch version for graphic assets depending on a real resolution. The one constant that does not change is the size of a user’s finger. We try to estimate an optimal physical size for a gesture and calculate using real measures like dpi and screen size in inches on every device.

Now is one of the best times of year to submit your apps to the Amazon Appstore and have them published for Android phones and tablets, including the new Kindle Fire line of tablets. In 2012, we saw a 50% increase in the number of app downloads during Thanksgiving week as compared to an average week. During ‘Digital Week’ in 2012, the week after Christmas, customers purchased and downloaded 600% more apps than an average week during the year.

As we’ve noted in earlier blog posts, it’s easy to get started as 75% of the Android tablet apps we’ve tested already work on Kindle Fire without any extra development. Amazon also has a tool that quickly ensures your apps have the best chance of passing both Amazon Appstore and Kindle Fire compatibility testing. Even if you’ve already got an app in the Amazon Appstore, you can use this service to check out any updates you plan on submitting.

The testing tool works fast and screens your apps for potential errors or incompatibilities. For example, you’ll learn:

• If there are structural issues with implementation of Amazon APIs
• If you are using any libraries that might impact compatibility
• If your app has features that are not supported by some Kindle Fire devices

If an issue is found, you will also get some suggestions for fixing the problem. Note, the tool is not designed to replace debugging in your IDE, and it won’t find null pointer exceptions or similar coding errors.

To get started, you can find the tool in the SDK & Tools area of the Developer Portal where there is now a link for the App Testing Service.
 

The App Testing Service detail page includes a brief description of the tool and a button that initiates the App Testing Service. Clicking that button brings you to the app testing page (below) which contains a control into which you can drag your .apk.
 

To give you a sense on the experience you can expect, I’ll walk you through the short process. I started with a small quotation app that I created and dragged it into the tool. The testing was complete in under a minute and my app passed. The tool then displayed a ‘Submit to Amazon Appstore’ button that I could use to start the app submission process.

Next, I tested the same app that used Google In-App Billing instead of Amazon In-App Purchasing. The tool caught that error and correctly identified the issue and offered suggestions for fixing my app. Here is that test result:
 

Here is another test result that identifies an error in In-App Purchasing implementation:
 

Once the test is complete, you can find the results of this and all your tests in a table at the bottom of the app testing page. This lets you go back and re-visit previous issues and recommendations across all the apps you have tested.

So don’t miss out on getting in front of all those customers during the holiday season. Save time and go to https://developer.amazon.com/tya/welcome.html and make sure your apps are ready to submit to the Amazon Appstore. 

One question developers commonly ask us is how they can grow their business by introducing their app to new Amazon customers. The Amazon team is here to help. Each day this week we’ll offer a tip on how to market your app on Amazon.

Marketing Tip #2: Submit your app to our marketing team for consideration for a featured marketing placement. 

We constantly strive to introduce Amazon customers to new apps they’ll love, thus helping our developers grow their businesses. We highlight apps through our storefronts on mobile devices, Kindle Fire, and Amazon.com and through marketing vehicles like e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter.  For example, as I write this, featured placements include “Highly Rated Apps and Games” and “Featured New Releases,” and your app would be considered for these placements as applicable.  Your app may also be considered for seasonally relevant placements like summer travel, back to school, or learning apps.

If you are interested in a featured placement through our marketing vehicles, we invite you to tell us more about your mobile app by completing our marketing request form available through the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Portal. 

Follow these steps to complete the form:

1) Check the Amazon Specific ID Number (ASIN) for your app on the Amazon.com site.

2) Navigate to the marketing section of the FAQ page. 

3) Click the link to the form available under the question “How do I get my app marketed?” 

4) Submit information about your app for our consideration by filling out the form.  Please include the ASIN number you recorded from the Amazon.com site. 

Meet Amazon at Casual Connect Seattle from July 24-26!

Happy Hour at the Diller Room- July 24, 2012 6:00-8:00 PM

Join us for drinks (two drink tickets provided) and hors d' oeuvres at the Diller Room on July 24th from 6pm-8pm. Mingle with representatives from the AWS, Amazon Mobile App Distribution, and GameCircle teams and enter a drawing to win a Kindle Fire.

You can register for the Happy Hour event on this page or just simply drop by. Please remember to bring your Casual Connect Conference badge for admittance.

The Diller Room is located at 1224 1st Avenue, Seattle, WA 98101.  The location is one block west of Benaroya Hall on the corner of 1st and University.

Amazon Speaker Sessions at Casual Connect

 Join us for two conference sessions hosted by Amazon speakers:

• Monetization Trends for Mobile Games with Aaron Rubenson, Director, Amazon Appstore for Android- Wednesday, July 25 at 10 AM.

• Optimizing Games for Kindle Fire with CJ Frost, Developer Evangelist- Thursday, July 26 at 11:30 AM.

Amazon Tables at Casual Connect

Kindle Fire development resources are now available to our developer community! These resources provide detailed documentation, best practices, an emulator, and sample code to make it easy for you to build great applications for Kindle Fire customers.

Our documentation details how to set up your development environment, create a great customer experience, and optimize and test your apps for Kindle Fire. We also provide a Kindle Fire emulator to help you more easily lay out and test your apps, and sample code that illustrates our best practices for performing specific tasks.

It’s easy to get started building and optimizing your apps for Kindle Fire. Visit the Kindle Fire Development Resources page on the Distribution Portal and start building today!

We’re pleased to announce that you can now submit apps for distribution in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, using the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Portal. We’ll begin distributing apps in these countries later this summer (and we have more countries planned in the near future). 

The Amazon Appstore in the U.S. has had a very successful year with millions of customers discovering and downloading apps and games. We continue to welcome new developers onto our platform, and since launch, we’ve grown to tens of thousands of apps—with more coming every day. Our recently launched In-App Purchasing API is already helping developers like Mobile Deluxe, G5 Entertainment, and Social Gaming Network delight their customers and generate significant revenue. Amazon now offers developers the opportunity to experience similar success with app sales outside the U.S.

Now is a great time for new developers to sign up and become familiar with the program. You have the ability to select the countries where you would like your apps to be sold and set your list prices by marketplace. If you are already participating in the program, your apps will automatically be made available for sale internationally by default. And you can easily change international availability for your apps via the Distribution Portal if your apps should not be sold in select countries. Developers allowing Amazon to sell apps internationally are responsible for ensuring their apps comply with all applicable export and import restrictions and the laws of the countries in which the apps are sold.

Though Amazon will not require apps to support multiple languages, we encourage you to consider localizing your apps with language translations and to think of creative ways to deliver great experiences to your international customers. Just as in the U.S., if you sell apps in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, and Spain, you will benefit from Amazon’s trusted 1-Click purchasing as well as the easy-to-integrate In-App Purchasing API.

Today we are also announcing two changes to the Amazon Mobile App Distribution agreement. First, building on the success of the April In-App Purchasing Service launch, and to simplify our global terms, Amazon will be aligning the revenue share for paid apps with that for in-app products sold using Amazon’s In-App Purchasing Service. Starting July 1, you will earn 70% of list price on each paid app sale. This is a change from the prior terms under which you earned either 70% of the app’s sales price or 20% of list price (whichever was greater). To put it differently, starting in July, you’ll receive 70% of the list price for all sales, regardless of whether you monetize your apps up front (paid apps) or downstream (using our In-App Purchasing Service).  

Second, we will be adapting the terms of the distribution agreement to provide more flexibility around timing for app submissions. You will now control which apps you will make available to Amazon customers, and when, as well as the countries in which your apps may be sold. As a reminder, it’s your responsibility to ensure your list prices do not exceed the lowest prices at which your apps and in-app products are sold in similar stores. To review the full agreement, including the two changes described above, please follow this link.

If you don’t already have a developer account, it’s easy to join and we’ve waived the annual fee for 2012  it’s free to register for a developer account. Sign up now, and start submitting your apps for international distribution later this summer!