With the launch of our Kindle Fire HD family of devices, we are introducing a new feature called Amazon Device Targeting, which offers you the ability to target APKs to specific devices.  While it is easy to support optional APIs and device capabilities within a single binary, you may decide that it is easiest for your apps to generate different binaries for the Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD.   For each title, you can now offer separate APKs for Kindle Fire, Kindle Fire HD 7", Kindle Fire HD 8.9", and general Android(all non-Amazon) devices.  

Amazon’s Device Targeting feature provides several benefits for your mobile apps:

• Better search relevancy for your app: Instead of having multiple apps for a similar title, your reviews, page views,downloads are consolidated to a single app—pushing your app up in search and relevancy rankings. 
• Reduced customer confusion:  Customers won’t be confused by multiple device-specific versions of your app.
• Device specific feature optimization: Tailor your APK for screen size and density, OpenGL compression format, and API version. 

User Experience

You may be wondering about the experience of your customers if you leverage the Amazon Device Targeting feature.  Say a customer owns both a Kindle Fire HD device and an Android mobile phone.  The customer downloads or purchases one of your apps on their Kindle Fire HD device. When the customer moves to their Android mobile phone, the correct APK is delivered based on screen and size density, OpenGL compression format, and API version—a by device optimized customer experience.   Customers will appreciate not having to sort the differences between Kindle Fire and regular editions of your app.  Increasing a customer’s confidence around the correct app purchasing decision for their devices will enhance your app brand messaging, build customer trust and loyalty, decrease your catalog fragmentation, and strengthen your footprint on Amazon.

Steps to Implement Amazon Device Targeting for Your Apps

1.  Create targeted binaries in your development environment as outlined in our FAQ.

2. Add a new app to the distribution portal (or select a current app). Within your Binary Tab, upload your binary, select the devices you are targeting, choose a binary alias then save & upload another binary.

Device Targeting currently allows for up to 4 individual APKs that can target non-Amazon Android devices, Kindle Fire (1^stGeneration), Kindle Fire, and Kindle Fire HD 7”. We will soon add the capability to add a 5th APK for Kindle Fire HD 8.9”. Please be mindful of versionCode and versionName requirements when building your APKs.

Note: You will see a warning if your first APK uploaded targets less device types than the last live version of your app.  This warning disappears once you have APKs targeting at least as many device types as your previous app version.  If you do not update your APKs to all device targets, customers will be unable to purchase your app on the device type you did not target.

3. If you are uploading a binary larger than 30mb, be sure follow the FTP instructions for naming convention. More information on FTP is available below.

4. You should now have your binaries listed at the top of your Binary Tab in your Development Portal . Each binary is now set to target a different device. 

Note:  currently, when you update an app in the multi-binary environment, you will need to create and upload an updated version of each binary. For example, if you have 4 target binaries for your app, and make an update to one of them, you will also need to update the version codes for the other 3 APKs and upload all 4 binaries.

Uploading a Binary with FTP

If you are uploading a binary larger than 30mb, be sure follow the FTP instructions for naming convention below.

You build the APK name as follows:

The first element is your version ID, ex:M3RRPI3Z18JUMV (this will stay the same for this app)

The second part is your binary alias.  For example, Binary1 (you can have multiple binary aliases each targeting a different device).

Ex: M3RRPI3Z18JUMV-Binary1.apk, M3RRPI3Z18JUMV-Binary2.apk,M3RRPI3Z18JUMV-Binary3.apk, M3RRPI3Z18JUMV-Binary4.apk

Note: If you currently have all hardware targeting options selected with the binary you have previously uploaded for this app update,  step through your existing uploaded binaries for this update, and adjust your device targeting per binary so that this APK can target a device type. 

1. Follow the basic instructions given in the FTP instructions and naming convention link. This will give you your Amazon Host/Username/Password so you can use your FTP client to upload selected binaries. Most, if not all, operating systems come with a command line FTP client you can use, though you are free to use any that supports the standard FTP protocol.

Example of FTP File Submissions

2. You should receive an e-mail indicating that you have successfully uploaded and associated your APKs with your app. Most errors are the result of improper naming conventions.

3. When you go to the Distribution Portal and select your app's Binary File tab, you should see your binary listed at the top of the edit page.

4. Select your first binary, select EDIT at the bottom of the screen and choose the appropriate Device Support settings for each binary.

Note:  No two APKs can target the same device type. However, a single APK target may target any amount of device types.   

5. Be sure to save.