IDC conducted an Amazon sponsored survey of 360 mobile application developers to understand their key motivators and gather feedback on their experience developing apps for the Kindle Fire platform versus Android and iOS. According to the survey, 65% of surveyed developers say that total revenue on Kindle Fire was similar or better than on other platforms. 76% of surveyed developers say that Amazon helps them connect to new customer segments.

To download the full report, click here.  

65% of Developers Say Total Revenue Similar or Better Than Other Platforms

IDC asked developers who currently build apps for the Kindle Fire to describe the return-on-investment profile of Kindle Fire and compare it to other platforms.

65% of the surveyed developers also say that the Total Revenue achieved on the Kindle Fire is similar to, or even better that, what they experience with other major platforms.  74% of the same developers say that Average Revenue per App/User is similar to or better than other platforms.

76% of Developers Say Amazon helps them Connect with New Segments

Finding new customers can be extremely difficult.  Developers who build apps for the Kindle Fire say:

The Kindle Fire platform can be a significant source of net new business and “reach” for developers at a time when new segments may be difficult to find on competing platforms.

Download the Report

To learn more, click here to download The Case for Developing Mobile Apps for the Amazon Appstore and Kindle Fire report prepared for Amazon by IDC.

With the release of the latest version of the Amazon Appstore for Android, customers using the Amazon Appstore on Android tablets and phones have more ways to discover and purchase apps.

New Features for Customers

The Amazon Appstore for Android is continuously updated with new features that improve the customer experience and make it easier for developers to monetize their apps. Here are a few recent updates:

• Customers can purchase your apps, and associated in app items, with Amazon Coins on Android tablets and phones
• Amazon Coins launched in France, Italy and Spain
• Enhanced Search with the ability for your customers to purchase your app directly from their search results

More Ways to Buy Apps with Amazon Coins

Amazon Coins can be purchased directly inside the Amazon Appstore for Android. Customers save up to 10% on apps, games and in-app items by purchasing Amazon Coins. Customers are shown their current Coins balance at the top of the screen as well as during checkout.

Figure 1- Available Amazon Coins displayed at top with ability to purchase at discount when clicking

Any of your apps or games that reward Amazon Coins when purchased can also be easily discovered in the Amazon Appstore for Android. Customers can search only for those apps and games that reward Amazon Coins from the navigation menu. We also feature apps and games rewarding Coins directly on the home screen.

Amazon Coins are a great way for your apps to get noticed in the Amazon Appstore. As a developer with a qualified app in the Appstore Developer Select program, customers who purchase your app will be rewarded with Amazon Coins for simply downloading your app. They can then use these Coins to buy other apps and in-app items.

Figure2- Apps and games that reward Amazon Coins can be viewed from the menu and on the main screen

Purchasing Directly from Search

Customers now get search hints whenever they’re searching for new apps and games. The title, publisher, customer rating and price are all displayed on the search hint. If a customer clicks on the button to make a purchase (Free or Paid), then more details about the app or game will be displayed, along with a “Get App” button that allows customers to immediately download your app or game. 

Figure 3- Purchasing a new game directly from search

Publish Your App to the Amazon Appstore

With the Amazon Appstore, customers can purchase your apps and games from a web browser, Kindle Fire tablets, Amazon Fire TV and select Android devices. Customers can find your apps and games in a variety of ways inside the Amazon Appstore.

If you have not submitted your Android app yet to the Amazon Appstore, registration is free and simple to complete and over 75% of Android tablets we tested work on Kindle Fire devices with no additional development required. Amazon also offers a free Mobile App SDK that supports In App Purchasing, Mobile Ads, A/B Testing, Analytics and more. Once your app is in the Amazon Appstore you can expand your reach to Kindle Fire and Amazon Fire TV devices at any time directly from within the developer console.

You may also want to check out these additional developer resources:

• Create a Free Amazon Developer Account
• Submit Your Android App
• Download the Amazon Mobile App SDK
• Android & Fire OS
• Amazon Fire TV
• Kindle Fire

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

At the Amazon Appstore, we’re continuing to create opportunities and services that help app developers reach more customers and make more money. Lately, we’ve highlighted some stories from app publishers who have had success distributing Kindle Fire and Android apps in the Amazon Appstore. You may have read about Soundtracker who increased average session length by 400% and Big Bubble Blue who generated up to 15% better ARPU. Many other developers are experiencing similar success and a recent article from BI Intelligence indicates that Amazon Appstore is “generating strong revenue results.”  

“Popular Kindle Fire apps are generating 59 cents of revenue for every dollar earned by top apps in the Google Play store, according to a Distimo study. Download volumes are about half those on Google Play for top app titles — impressive considering how many more Android devices are in circulation.”

75% of Android tablet apps we tested work on Kindle Fire, with no added development necessary. And with apps available in almost 200 countries and strong monetization potential, there hasn’t been a better time to try the Amazon Appstore. Sign up for a free developer account and get started.

Check out the full Business Insider report here.

One Game, Everywhere

Gone are the days where you can make a game and publish it to a single platform and expect to be successful. Like any business that sells consumer products, you need to go where the people are. That means the games you make should run on a multitude of different platforms and accept any number of different input types. There’s also one more catch: your players expect to be able to share their game data across all of these different platforms, especially if they are paying for your game multiple times. With that in mind I have outlined what I call “responsive game design,” which is modeled loosely after some of the core concepts of responsive web design. It’s also a framework that will help you think about enabling your games to scale across multiple platforms.

Applying Responsive Design Concepts To Games

On the web, responsive design is a set of guidelines and best practices that help websites scale from desktop to mobile. Web developers discovered early on that it was too difficult to maintain separate designs for desktop and mobile so this solution allows a site to re-adjust to any resolution based on a set of ideal screen sizes. While responsive design on the web focused solely on adapting a site’s visual design based on common viewports, the notion of responsive game design builds on this concept to include other key aspects you need to consider when making multi-platform games.

Responsive game design can be summed up in the following key requirements:

1. Game graphics and UI support multiple resolutions
2. Game mechanics work across multiple types of input
3. Publish to multiple platforms with the same codebase
4. Saved data is synced across all platforms

While most of these are already best practice for games in general, the collection of them represent a guideline for game designers moving forward to help reach the broadest audience possible.

1. Scaling Game Visuals Across Different Resolutions

If you come from desktop game development this is not going to be a big shock to you since it’s common practice to support multiple-resolutions and varying computer performance. While mobile development is relatively new in this space, over the past few years, mobile device resolutions have tended to normalize around a few key aspect ratios (3:2, 4:3 & 16:9) allowing the same desktop game concepts to be applied:

• Build for aspect ratios not fixed resolutions
• Create simplified, dynamic UI that can adapt to different resolutions
• Have degradable graphics that can adapt to the power of the device

It’s also important to note that optimizing a game’s graphics goes well beyond just the resolution. Each system has different performance so being able to dynamically scale the game’s visual effects across these different platforms is critical as well. Especially when dealing with high pixel density displays, you could actually end up pushing incredibly high resolutions on devices that can’t fully support them. Also you may need to tone down specific special effects on mobile verses desktop or perform special optimizations when going to TV to account for slower display refresh rates. Make sure that you take into account these limitations and plan accordingly.

2. Supporting A Single Control System Across Different Input Types

A single game can support three types of input (mouse + keyboard, controller and touch) based on the device they are on. While thinking through each of these inputs, game designers should consider how their game will work going from desktop to tablet to phone and TV. Will the controls hold up on a system without physical buttons or should the gameplay be simplified a bit to account for the lowest common denominator?

It’s completely possible to have games work with a single input mechanic but a lot of planning and consideration must go into the overall design of the game. Most devices accept a game controller at this point so while not ideal, players can still plug one in if virtual controls are too frustrating. It’s especially important to take into account that not everyone who plays your games will have access to a controller. The Fire TV ships with a remote by default so if you want to capture the largest audience possible you’ll want to make sure you support the remote out of the box. You can still publish a controller only game but keep in mind that each input limitation you place on your game shrinks your potential audience accordingly.

3. Publishing a single game from the same codebase.

For years, developers had leaned on C++ as a cross platform solution to making games that work across multiple platforms. A successful port could be anything above 50% core reusability. I still know developers who build their own game engines that allow them to manually port from platform to platform but that process can be time consuming and if you are a small indie developer, the additional bug testing time may not possible to maintain across all the devices you want to support. That is why it is critical to find a cross publishing solution you feel comfortable with.

The most popular game engine today for indies is Unity 3D. From there other solutions, which grow in complexity, are Unreal Engine, CryEngine. There also some smaller more specialized game engines like GameMaker Studio. If pre-built game frameworks are not your thing, consider some cross compilers like HaXe, Monkey and CocoonJS. Either way there are many options and each will have some kind of impact on your end result or the platforms you can reach so do your research while designing your game.

4. Saving State Across Devices

What good is having a game that can be played on multiple platforms but the player needs to restart their progress every time? A key component to the responsive game design concept is allowing a single game session to extend across different devices allowing your player to start on one platform and continue on another. Imagine being able to play a Fire TV game at home then continuing your game on the go on any mobile device?

Steam was one of the first game publishing platforms to introduce cloud based game saving and since then more companies have offered similar solutions. The biggest issue is that these services are platform specific. For a developer to support different platforms, they would have to roll their own solution. However, built into our GameCircle API is WhisperSync, which can be used to not only have cross platform leaderboards but also sync game data across different mobile devices.

By adding GameCircle’s WhsperSync to your game, you can leverage this to let your players go from mobile (iOS, Android and FireOS) to the Fire TV for the full 10-foot experience then sync their game data back across all of these devices. While GameCircle doesn’t support PC syncing today, being able to have a consistent saved game mechanism for your mobile and Fire TV builds is a huge advantage for your players and a step in the right direction.

Where Do We Go From Here?

While this is just the foundation for a larger concept in game design, it’s up to you as the game designer to help define and shape the future of what gaming on multiple platforms means to the player. At Amazon we are incredibly focused on the customer and we build tools to help you as the developer serve them better. Over the next few years we will see more and more games that reach across platform walls to enable a gamer to pick the device and play style they want and with the correctly designed game, that player will have the same experience no matter where they choose to play your game.

Resources:

• GameCircle https://developer.amazon.com/public/apis/engage/gamecircle
• Amazon Fire TV https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/devices/fire-tv
• Publishing to Amazon Appstore https://developer.amazon.com/public/support/submitting-your-app

- Jesse Freeman (@jessefreeman)

Amazon WebView (AWV) is a Chromium-derived web runtime exclusive to Fire OS. AWV makes better performing and more powerful apps possible by providing support for a faster JavaScript engine (V8), remote debugging, and hardware optimizations for Kindle Fire devices including an accelerated 2D Canvas. Enabling your Cordova project to support AWV gives you access to HTML5 features not supported by Android’s built in WebView such as: CSS Calc, Form Validation, getUserMedia, IndexedDB, Web Workers, WebSockets and WebGL.

For developers who are not familiar with Cordova, it is an open source solution that provides tools and templates that wrap web code and assets, allowing you to publish your web code and assets as if they were native apps. Cordova is also customizable via its plugin architecture which allows developers to extend the framework in order to access OS level APIs like the built-in contact list, as well as physical hardware on the device itself like the camera.  Cordova also makes it possible for two way communication from the web app wrapper to the device’s native language.

To ensure that all core Cordova plugins will be natively supported, Amazon worked with the Apache community when adding Cordova support for the Amazon Fire OS platform. Here is how to set it up on your local computer, enable Amazon Web View and create a project from scratch.

1. Install Tools

You need to make sure you have all the required tools and libraries needed to compile and package an Android application. Download and install the following (please note these links will take you to third-party sites):

• Java
• Android SDK
• Apache ANT
• NodeJS

You'll need to have Java installed, and the Android SDK from developer.android.com/sdk which includes the Android Developer Toolkit (adt). You may be presented with a choice of where to install the SDK, otherwise move the downloaded adt-bundle tree to wherever you store development tools.

For Cordova command-line tools to work, you need to include the Android SDK's tools and platform-tools directories in your PATH environment:

To modify the PATH environment on Mac, Linux, etc.:

• Use a text editor to create or modify the ~/.bash_profile file, adding a line such as the following, depending on where the SDK installs:

export PATH= $ {PATH}:/Development/adt-bundle/sdk/platform-tools:/Development/adt-bundle/sdk/tools

You will also need to enable Java, Ant and/or Node from the command line. Open a command prompt and type "java", then "ant" then "node". Reinstall, or append to the PATH whichever fail to run.

This will expose the tools in newly opened terminal windows. Otherwise run this to make them available in the current session:

$ source ~/.bash_profile

To modify the PATH environment on Windows 7:

• Click on the Start menu in the lower-left corner of the desktop, right-click on Computer, then click Properties.
• Click Advanced System Settings in the column on the left.
• In the resulting dialog box, press Environment Variables.
• Select the PATH variable and press Edit.
• Append the following to the PATH based on where you installed the SDK, for example:

;C:\Development\adt-bundle\sdk\platform-tools;C:\Development\adt-bundle\sdk\tools

• Save the value and close both dialog boxes.

You will also need to enable Java, Ant and/or Node from the command line. Open a command prompt and type "java", then "ant" then "node". Reinstall, or append to the PATH whichever fail to run:

;%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%ANT_HOME%\bin

2. Install Cordova

Make sure you are able to invoke npm (Node Package Manager) on your command line; it's added as a part of Node.js. (You can install Node.js from the nodejs.org homepage and type NPM in the command line to validate the installation.)

To install Cordova, open a command prompt/terminal and use:

$ npm install -g cordova

On Unix-like systems, you may need to append "sudo" to ensure it is installed correctly. See Cordova's documentation for the Command-Line Interface for more details.

$ cordova create hello com.example.hello HelloWorld

$ cd hello
$ cordova platform add amazon-fireos

$ mkdir ~/.cordova/lib/amazon-fireos/cordova/3.4.0/framework/libs
$ cp awv_interface.jar ~/.cordova/lib/amazon-fireos/cordova/3.4.0/framework/libs/

> mkdir %USERPROFILE%\.cordova\lib\amazon-fireos\cordova\3.4.0\framework\libs
> cp awv_interface.jar %USERPROFILE%\.cordova\lib\amazon-fireos\cordova\3.4.0\framework\libs

$ cordova platform rm amazon-fireos 
$ cordova platform add amazon-fireos

./hello/platforms/amazon-fireos/libs/awv_android_factory.jar

$ cordova run

In May last year we announced Login with Amazon (LWA), an OAuth 2.0 protocol authentication service that allows your mobile apps for Android and iOS to securely connect with Amazon customers.

Today we are making things even easier for customers using apps enabled with Login with Amazon  on the latest generation of Kindle Fire devices.  Starting today, mobile apps and games that use Login with Amazon on these Kindle Fire devices will no longer need to ask Amazon customers to sign in each time the app is run. Instead, the first time the app is run Login with Amazon will automatically use the account registered to the Kindle Fire device.  The user will then simply need to consent to share their information once for each of those apps to be automatically signed in.

What Has Changed for Developers?

In addition to enabling single sign-on for Kindle Fire, Login with Amazon is now integrated with the Amazon Mobile App SDK with documentation available here in the API section of developer.amazon.com.  Login with Amazon is now part of your one-stop destination for all of Amazon’s Mobile App Developer offerings.

What Has Changed for Kindle Fire Customers?

Mobile Apps and Games downloaded to Kindle Fire devices that have implemented Login with Amazon will no longer need to ask customers to sign in each time.

In the below screenshot I launch the Sample Login with Amazon app from the Amazon Mobile App SDK.

Figure 1- Launching the Login with Amazon Sample App from the Amazon Mobile App SDK

The Sample App provides a Login with Amazon button for the user to click.  Since this is the first time I am logging in with the Sample App I am greeted with a prompt where I agree to consent to share specified information from my Amazon account under the Settings section.  Note, I am only prompted the first time I run the app and when I use the app in the future, I will automatically be logged in. To stop logging in automatically, go to Your Account>> Manage Login with Amazon settings and remove the app.

Figure 3- Giving the App permission to automatically log you in on future launches

What Versions of Kindle Fire Are Supported?

All third generation of Kindle Fire are supported including:

• Kindle Fire HDX 7” HDX (3^rd Gen)
• Kindle Fire HDX 8.9” HDX (3^rd Gen)
• Kindle Fire HD 7" (3^rd Gen)

How Do I Get Started?

To enable Login with Amazon, click on the Login with Amazon tab in the Developer Console to create or select a security profile.

Next, follow the below steps to setup your developer environment and add Login with Amazon to your app:

1. Install the Login with Amazon SDK for Android
2. Run the Sample App
3. Register with Login with Amazon
4. Create a Login with Amazon Project
5. Use the SDK for Android APIs

The above Login with Amazon sample app is now included with the Amazon Mobile App SDK.  Simply download the latest version and navigate to  Android/LoginWithAmazon/samples/SampleLoginWithAmazonApp in the folder where you unzipped the SDK.

Learn more about the Login with Amazon API section of developer.amazon.com here.

Conclusion

By enabling Login with Amazon on your Mobile Apps and Games for Kindle Fire, you no longer need to ask customers to sign in. This streamlines the experience for your customers and increases engagement for your apps where your customers may have needed to remember their specific login credentials. 

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

We are excited to announce that developers can publish their web apps to the Amazon Appstore without a manifest. As we continue to streamline the web app submission process our goal is to make submitting hosted web apps just as easy as submitting Android ones. Now all you need to do is supply your hosted web app’s url, instead of uploading an APK, and the rest of the process is exactly how you would expect. Fill in the app’s description, upload screenshots and define your app’s permissions which allow you to quickly publish web content to the Amazon Appstore. Let’s take a look at how this works.

Our web app submission process revolves around being able to take any online website and by submitting its URL it will be published like a native app to the Amazon Appstore. For customers who have websites that support responsive design, work well on mobile, and are looking for a way to distribute their site next to native apps, this is the best solution out there for getting hosted content in the Amazon Appstore. Additionally, they can monetize their website by setting a base list price or by using Amazon’s In-App Purchasing APIs. If this is your first time submitting a web app, you simply provide a url where you would normally upload a native APK.

Let’s take a look at how you can get your own web app ready for submission in four easy steps.

Step 1: Verifying Your Web App’s URL

You can now validate your web app’s URL right from the developer portal.

Simply put your URL in, click the verify button and the tool will let you know if the contents at the URL pass the preliminary submission requirements. We check for the following things:

1.      Is the URL properly formated

2.      Make sure that a URL does not return a 4XX or 5XX http status

3.      URL has valid security certificate

4.      Redirects don’t lead to an eventual 4XX or 5XX code 

Just keep in mind that users will need to have an Internet connection to access your site once it’s submitted.

Step 2: Declaring Web App’s Permissions

Once your URL has has been verified, you can select your app’s permission. Simply check off the options that apply to your app.

Step 3: Select Compatible Platforms

Then you can define on which devices this web app can be published.

While the Kindle Fire HD and HDX devices offer the best performance for web apps, make sure you test your web app on older devices to ensure the performance is ideal for your users. Intensive web games and anything using WebGL should be distributed on Kindle Fire HD and above.

One other thing to keep in mind is that while you can install web apps in the Amazon Appstore on any Android device that has the store installed, it will default to the native WebView on that device. This means you will not have access to the optimized Amazon WebView and will see a drop in performance. Make sure to test out your URL in the web app Tester and select Android Web View to see what it will run like on native Android devices.

Step 4: Agreeing to Distribution Rights

Finally, the last thing you need to do is check off Distribution Rights.

This ensures that you own the domain and the rights to publish the app. We will do our own verification to make sure you are in fact the owner of this domain and are not trying to publish another site to the store.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, the process of submitting a web app to the Amazon Appstore couldn’t be easier. Now that the entire process is done through the developer portal it should take you only a few minutes to expand your web app’s user base by making it available to millions of Amazon Appstore customers in nearly 200 countries. Better yet, you now have the ability to charge for your web app or add in-app purchases to create new opportunities to monetize your online content on mobile devices.

Additional Resources

Amazon Developer Portal -

• More about publishing HTML5 apps to the Amazon Appstore -
• Download the web app Tester - http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DZ3I1W8
• Adding IAP to Your Web App - https://developer.amazon.com/post/Tx3LQBBJRUYE58P/Implementing-the-Amazon-In-App-Purchasing-API-in-your-HTML5-Web-Apps.html

- Jesse Freeman (@jessefreeman)

While at GDC last week, I was able to speak to over 300 developers. It’s exciting to see all the ideas and the passion that fuels them - I love being around people that are so creative and productive. Often our conversations would turn to how to take their great idea and turn it into a great business. We’d talk about how to expand their distribution channels, best practices for monetization, opportunities for promotion and, most importantly, how to continuously improve the experience of their game.

Most of the people I spoke to understood the basic premise of AB Testing — to provide more than one experience and see which performs the best. For example, it’s common in advertising to deploy several ads with different messaging or art work to a small number of customers and then expand to more with the one that performs the best. It’s similar in a game, where you could test several experiences like the difficulty of a level, the impact of ad placement, or the effectiveness of your viral mechanic, etc.

Still, most of the developers I spoke to were surprised and excited by the following 4 aspects of Amazon’s AB Testing service:

1. FREE. Anyone with a (free) developer account can use the free AB Testing service for an unlimited number of tests.
2. Cross Platform. iOS, Android and, Kindle Fire are all supported. You can use AB Testing in any or all of these platforms.
3. Deploy Instantly. Part of the power of AB Testing is that your producers, level designers, analysts (the non-coders) can instantly deploy the winning experience to all players without a re-submit to any app store.
4. Multiple goals. It’s easy to imagine testing which ad placement results in the best click-through. But, how does it impact 3 day retention or level completion or time to first purchase? Amazon’s AB Testing can help you measure an experiment against multiple goals.

You can give it a try right now. It’s available from the developer portal at https://developer.amazon.com/public/apis/manage/ab-testing.

Don’t send a gift, we’ll give one to you

Note: Effective 08-26-2015 Free App of the Day (FAD) has been replaced with Amazon Underground.

Yes, on our birthday this year, we’d like to offer you some gifts!  Before we get to the numbers, let’s take the wrapping off our present to you. Starting on March 16^th we kicked off our birthday week with discounts on apps and in-app items along with some great Free App of the Day specials (FAD). Starting today and running through Saturday, we’ll offer a “Appstore Hits” FAD bundle, which is valued at over $50 and includes titles like Monopoly, POLARIS Office, Dr. Panda Airport, Swype Keyboard and more.  You can find this FAD bundle at www.amazon.com/FADhits.

We’re also continuing the deals and discounts we kicked off our birthday week with, where you’ll continue to find deals of up to 60% off on select apps plus amazing promotions on in-app items for titles including Wheel of Fortune from Sony Pictures, Terraria from 505 Games and Warner Bros.’ Batman: Arkham City Lockdown. As an added bonus, for a limited time, customers who buy select in-app items within great games like Asphalt 8, Animal Voyage, Kingdoms of Camelot, The Hobbit, Sonic Dash, World at Arms and Despicable Me: Minion Rush can earn up to 50% back on the purchase price in the form of Amazon Coins. 

Great deals will continue to run through March 29^th, so check back to our store for the latest. We hope you enjoy these savings. Now on to the numbers.

Amazon Appstore by the numbers

The Amazon Appstore launched on March 22, 2011 with 4,084 apps available for users of Android devices. Since that day, the Kindle Fire line of devices has launched with the Amazon Appstore, and an increasing number of mobile carriers around the world are selling Android phones with the Amazon Appstore pre-installed.

We’re happy that we’ve been able to meet the needs of so many customers over that time. We thought you might like to see some of the numbers from the Amazon Appstore over the years:

Downloads

On our Birthdays, these were the most downloaded apps:

• On our initial launch in 2011 - Angry Birds Rio (Ad-Free)
• 1st birthday, 2012 - Backyard Zombies
• 2nd birthday, 2013 - The Croods Movie Storybook

Amazon Appstore Numbers

Number of apps: Over 180,000 in the US

Number of countries: 198

Hours required for a developer to submit an app: Less than 1

Delivering value to developers and customers

Since we started three years ago, both customers and developers have seen value from programs like Free App of the Day, Amazon Coins and Appstore Developer Select. We’ve also expanded our developer services significantly and have launched services like Mobile Associates, which lets developers earn commissions on physical goods sold on Amazon.com, and A/B Testing which helps developers tweak and tune their apps in real-time. These services and others have helped developers earn more money, and we’re certainly not finished yet. Look for more innovative cross-platform programs and services in the years to come. As always at Amazon, it’s still day 1 in this business, and we’re just getting started.

What you can do

• Keep an eye on the Free App of the Day here.
• You can get started on the Amazon Appstore in less time than you think.  You can create a free Appstore developer account in less than 30 minutes here.
• You can submit one of your existing apps in less than an hour (watch this video to learn how).

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)

If you are a developer who has had an app in our store for a while, or someone new to our platform, we encourage you to use Amazon Appstore and Kindle Fire badges and branding to help promote your app.  In this article we’ll review badges, other images, links and guidelines for their use with your app and marketing.

Badges:

There are two badges with three color-treatments each that you can use. Here are the badges that you can use to promote the availability of your app in our U.S. store:

The Amazon and Kindle Fire badges above are available in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and Japanese. The Amazon badges are also available in Portuguese.

You can get full-size downloads of these badges on this page, along with some usage guidance.

Other Images

If you’d like to use a plain icon:

Or if you would like to use a Kindle device image:

You can find links to those resources about half way down this page.

Links to the Amazon Appstore

For web-browser based linking, please:

Use this link structure: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/ASINnumber/ref=mas_pm_app_name

Replace the bold “.com” with your country marketplace suffix. (.com for US, .de for Germany, etc)

Replace the bold “ASINnumber” with your mobile app’s ASIN (Amazon Standard Item Number) and app name. Please use an underscore (_) to separate the words in the “app_name” portion, if your title is more than one word. You can find the ASIN on the Product Details section of your mobile app on www.amazon.com/apps.

For example, this is the Air Patriots link in the German marketplace:

http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B008KE3960/ref=mas_pm_air_patriots

For in-app advertising or mobile app-based linking:

In the US:

Use this link structure: http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/dl/android?p=com.example.package&ref=mas_pm_app_name

Replace the bold portions with the package name of your APK, and app name respectively.

For our international stores:

Use this link structure:

amzn://android?p=com.example.package

Replace the bold portion with the package name of your APK.

NOTE: With any of these link structures, please test the links before using them to make sure that they direct to the correct page or search results.

The link instructions above are pretty much identical to the guidance near the bottom of this page.

Other Useful Guidelines

There is still more good stuff on the handy page I keep linking to. This includes guidelines for correct use of the Amazon Appstore trademark when blogging or using social media to promote your app. I would, of course, be remiss if I failed to mention the legal requirements listed at the bottom of the page. Our attorneys have done a good job of breaking the important points down into easily readable bullet points. Please do look at them, it won’t take long.

Just in case you missed the link earlier, you can read all of this information here, on our developer portal.

Reaching More Customers and Making More Money Per User

In a previous case study, you heard about the tactics that Big Blue Bubble uses to monetize their free to play (F2P) games. In this study, we’d like to share how June Software increased their app exposure by going from an iOS-only producer to an iOS and Android platform producer, and how their presence in the Amazon Appstore has racked up higher Average Revenue per User (ARPU) than any other app store.

June Software is a small San Francisco based software company founded in 2008. They build casual, arcade games and e-learning games for children. Initially June Software only built games for iOS where they have titles such as Math vs. Zombies and Guess the Movie, which is ranked #3 worldwide and is #1 in Australia.

June + Unity + Amazon Appstore = Less Friction, More Revenue

To grow their customer base, June Software decided to address the Android marketplace. June chose to port their iOS games to Android using Unity. Unity allows them to build their app once and deploy it to multiple app stores, including the Amazon Appstore.

When we asked about their experience on Amazon apps store, June Software Director Products Saurabh Jain said:  “On Amazon, we have seen 2x times the ARPU [we see] from Google Play, and 1.2x [more than] than Apple AppStore. The overall downloads aren’t there yet, but the revenue makes it a very good market for us.”

Increasing Time in Games Increases Potential Income

One effective strategy that Saurabh implemented is that they have integrated Amazon IAP and GameCircle features in their games, which increased potential revenue and player engagement. GameCircle includes features such as leaderboards and achievements that keep players engaged and can increase user session time and session frequency, giving uses more opportunities to make IAP purchases. And it works on Android and iOS. This is exactly what June Software needs for their games available for both platforms.

What can you do?

• To learn more about using Amazon GameCircle in your Unity apps, read this blog post and refer to this documentation.
• To learn more about using Amazon In-App Purchasing in your Unity apps, read this documentation. To see how Mad Menace Games used the Amazon IAP Plug-In for Unity, read this post.
• For additional information on Amazon Unity Plug-ins, read this. 

About Kinetic Art

Kinetic Art, an Israeli startup established in 2010, is the publisher of the highly popular cooking app Look & Cook. Kinetic Art's core technology and intellectual property revolves around in-app ecommerce optimization.

Recently, Kinetic Art published Look & Cook to the Amazon Appstore (download here) their first ever-Android version. I had a chance to sit down with Dudu Mimran from Kinetic Art and talk about Kinetic Art’s experience publishing on the Amazon Appstore, what it was like implementing the Amazon Mobile Associates API, and what type of success they have seen so far.

“Look and Cook is a cooking and now a shopping app, thanks to Amazon’s Mobile Associates API. We are building a platform for building cooking apps.” - Dudu Mimran.

Why start with Amazon? A better user experience.

Having found early success on iOS, including an advertising campaign on Pinterest, the team decided it was time for an Android version. For Kinetic Art the most important thing for Look & Cook was ensuring a great user experience. They were confident they could achieve this vision on Kindle Fire as they only needed to target a single device vs a multiple of Android devices. “On Amazon, you can focus a lot on Kindle. With Google Play you have to make sure you having everything looking good on many, many devices. We decided it would be a much easier transition going from iOS to Amazon because of this.”

Look & Cook was able to leverage Amazon to create a culinary lifestyle experience by integrating ecommerce into the food and culinary world. The current version of Look & Cook now has numerous physical goods related to the cooking of the selected recipe. “We created a small shop within each recipe. The tools that are included in the app are recommended by the recipe creator to make the recipe perfectly. In general, this is what our investors have in mind. Our main business model in the future will be ecommerce. We are not there yet, but this is a great step. We are betting everything on ecommerce and we already have purchases. People are buying for sure,” declares Dudu.

“Look and Cook is a cooking and now a shopping app, thanks to Amazon’s Mobile Associates API. We are building a platform for building cooking apps. Amazon’s Mobile Associates API really excited us because we have always wanted to integrate ecommerce but it’s something very hard to do as a startup. Since Mobile Associates launched it has made it much easier for us. We are very happy working with Amazon,” says Dudu.

Amazon Customers: More Engaged

Even though the team has seen a smaller number of app downloads on Amazon vs. iOS people are definitely buying goods and they have already seen differences in the behavior of customers. “We have two types of users on Amazon: those that use it on an ongoing basis and those that love it for cooking. We also see those that love it for the very first time. They are more engaged on Amazon, and if I compare the amount and depth of reviews, then totally, people are much more engaged into the app itself,” says Dudu.

According to the team, once they understood the basics of integrating the API for Amazon Mobile Associates, things progressed quickly. “It was very easy, and it just works!” says Dudu.

“Our main business model in the future will be ecommerce. We are not there yet, but this is a great step. We are betting everything on ecommerce and we already have purchases. “

Figure 1- Look & Cook running on a Kindle Fire HDX 7”

Figure 2- Tapping on Shop will bring up a physical good for that recipe you can buy with the Buy Now button.

Figure 3- Clicking Buy Now takes you right to the product from Amazon without leaving Look & Cook

Figure 4- Look & Cook’s category of recipes

Kinetic Art projecting 8-10x growth

To measure success the team built a detailed level of conversion measurement. For example, they know how many people download the app, navigate through the app, navigated to an extended view, and buy products. In the future, one of the improvements will be creating greater exposure to other random products and not forcing people into the ones the app recommended.

It’s too early to tell how much money the team will be making but already they are seeing purchases. “It’s less important for the number at the moment, behavior is what is very important. Really getting customers used to the behavior is important. They are not accustomed to buying within the app. Now we are working on several angles: distribution, volume of users, exposure of more products, and then quality of product and selection,” says Dudu. 

When asked about potential growth, the team projects as much as 8-10x growth once they start really marketing to users. Their favorite part about working with Amazon? “I would say the personal touch. This is very, very important to us and a huge differentiator. From a user perspective, Amazon customers are much more engaged and seem to be people that buy.”

You can check out Look & Cook in the Amazon Appstore here and find out more about the Amazon Mobile Associates API here.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Two years ago, Sean Sheedy, saw an opportunity to teach his boys more about mobile app development. He decided to take his sons Tommy and Ian with him to MoDevEast and participate together in a hackathon. These three were our big winners from the MoDevEast competition. It all started out with Sean bringing paper, pens and other supplies so that the boys could help out by drawing the app’s user interface in prior MoDevEast competitions. Once they came up with the user interface Sean would code whatever ideas the boys came up with.

Figure 1Sean with his sons Tommy and Ian

His oldest son Tommy (ten at the time) would always talk to other attendees and sponsors from the hackathon and would work alongside them. When one of the attendees gave Tommy an iOS app recipe, it wasn’t long after that Tommy had an entire app running and needless to say dad was impressed.

At the recent MoDevEast 2013 conference Tommy brought his friend Devin and his Dad to the conference too, bringing the teams total membership to four. 

“We were trying to decide what app to write,” recalls Sean, “Devin’s Dad and I like to get together and jam on the guitar. We thought about doing an app called Jam Session. The idea that we tried to implement was an app that would let you playback a track that somebody else recorded and while it plays back you can record your own track. I found two API’s called Audio Track and Audio Record for Android. We found that it was possible to do this and then figured out how to make the app work.”

“Tommy investigated early on of what it would take to make this work on a Kindle. He saw that it would be really easy to port over to the Kindle because it’s basically Android,” says Sean. “Tommy saw the benefit of creating the design and then began writing code. We initially built it for Android. The API we ended up implementing was really a simple audio playback. “

Figure 3 Sean and the boys using post it notes to flush out the app user interface

“There was no porting involved – it was intended to run on any Android device and that includes the Kindle.” - Sean

So what was the process like getting their Android app running on Kindle? “It was a no brainer to port this over to Kindle. It basically ran right away. We basically did no work,” Sean says. “The only thing that would have been a deal breaker is if we had used vendor-specific or unpublished APIs. Nothing stood out to be an issue. There was no porting involved – it was intended to run on any Android device and that includes the Kindle Fire. “

What about the Kindle development environment? Since Kindle is Android it’s just like any other Android environment using Eclipse. “In development it’s really cool that I can plug the Kindle in and it’s just like any Android device. That is REALLY nice.” says Tommy. 

So what do Sean and the boys envision for the future? “We would like to be able to make it easy to buy the music that people are jamming to in our app. You can start off by buying the music you want to jam to and make that the base track and then add your tracks to it. Amazon’s Mobile Associates API would help us do that.”

“In development, it’s really cool that I can plug the Kindle in, and it’s just like any Android device. That is REALLY nice.” - Tommy.

Did the boys have fun on this father and sons hackathon adventure? “Tommy thought this was our best concept yet. We didn’t win the top prize, but we won the Kindle Fire and some money,” says Sean. “Pretty much every hackathon I’ve gone to I’ve gone to with the kids. The boys are getting a lot from the experience, and I highly recommend this to any tech parent.” 

Amazon Mobile Associates

Interested in selling Physical Goods in your Android Apps using the Amazon’s Moble Associates API that Sean mentions? Be sure to check out our Mobile Associates Blog Posts and Developer Portal for full details.

-Dave (@TheDaveDev)

Today, we’re extending Amazon Coins to all Android devices with the Amazon Appstore installed.  Amazon Coins is a way for Amazon Appstore customers to buy and enjoy Android apps, games, and in-app items for less. Customers can save up to 10% on apps and games by purchasing Amazon Coins, while developers continue to get their full 70% revenue share.

More Ways for More Customers to Buy Your Apps

Since the launch of Amazon Coins in the US, UK, and Germany in 2013, customers have already purchased hundreds of millions of Amazon Coins and are actively using them on Kindle Fire devices, representing real dollars to developers.

Now, users of the Amazon Appstore on Android will be able to use Amazon Coins to purchase apps, games, and a broad range of in-app items on any Android device running the Amazon Appstore in the US, UK, or Germany. If a customer is already a Kindle Fire user, he or she will automatically see their existing Coins balance on their other Android devices in addition to their Kindle devices.

How You Can Benefit from This News

We have already seen developers benefit from customers using their Amazon Coins to try out and explore new apps and games. Now that Coins are available to an even larger audience, you can take advantage of the opportunity by making sure your app is available on the largest number of devices.

Check Device Availability

Check your device availability to make sure your app is available to as many Coins-enabled customers as possible.  Checking is easy, and adding supported devices is not much harder. Follow these steps below to get started:

1.      In the Amazon Developer Portal, go to your app’s detail page.

Under the Binary File(s) tab, check the Device Support section for “All non-Amazon Android devices…” (see sample below).

2.      If your app has “All non-Amazon Android devices...” and the Kindle Fire devices listed, then you’re done!

If the entry is missing “All non-Amazon Android devices...” (as shown below), you can change that.

Change this by: a) Modifying your AndroidManifest.xml, b) Creating an ‘Upcoming Version’ in the dev portal, and then c) Submitting the .apk with the new manifest file. Here are the steps to do that:

a.       If you have verified that your .apk will run successfully on some (or most) other Android devices, make sure you reference supported devices in your AndroidManifest.xml file by using <compatible-screens /> or <supports-screens />  (please make sure to increment the version number of your app when you modify the manifest).

b.      Click Add Upcoming Version in the dev portal.

While in the new ‘Upcoming Version’ section, go to the Binary File(s) tab and check all the appropriate boxes.

c.       Upload the .apk with the new manifest.xml, make sure the other tabs are complete (and app version number is different), and re-submit your app.

3.      If your app is not available on Kinde Fire devices, you can use Amazon’s App Testing Service to get the info you need in about a minute. Just drag and drop your .apk into the tool to get your results! You can also check out common reasons for incompatibility, and check out the documentation on our dev portal.

Questions

If you have any questions about Amazon Coins or device availability, please check our dev portal, or contact one of our developer support professionals.