Has anyone had any success with Amazon apps?

[Lars Laborious]

Hi, all. I have several apps on the Amazon App Store but no longer think it's worth the effort updating them/adding new ones, considering that App Store (IOS) and Google Play pays off way way more. So, what's your experience with Amazon?

[Colin Holgate]

I'm pretty sure that Amazon has more downloads of apps I've made than Google Play. One way to look at it is do you want to prevent Fire users from getting your apps? If you do, then don't submit to Amazon. If on the other hand you don't mind if Fire users can buy your apps, then carry on submitting to Amazon.

Another way to look at it is that most of the Amazon downloads you get are ones that you would not have got from Google Play. And you're also submitting the same binary file (well, in my case I have to do a single variable change for each store, but otherwise it's the same binary), so the extra effort for doing Amazon is just in filling in the app details, most of which are identical to iTunes or Google Play.

It would be much easier to make a case for dropping Android completely, because iTunes downloads are a lot higher than Amazon and Google combined.

[Lars Laborious]

‌Thanks for responding, Colin. In my case (being a single developer with no advertising budget), apps on itunes and Google Play sells way more than on Amazon Appstore. All my apps are available for Fire users. It might have to do with how the Amazon customers search for apps, but I can only guess. Do you have any thoughts on that?

[Colin Holgate]

Not sure how people find apps, other than the new devices promote apps on the start screen, plus there's the free app of the day.

I just checked the figures for one of the apps I programmed. In iTunes it about 37k downloads, Amazon it's 35k, and Google Play it's around 14k. So at least in that app's case it's been worth doing Android, and Amazon in particular. It's a free app with a couple of 99c in-app products (that haven't sold too much), so I'm not going to be retiring any time soon!

[Lars Laborious]

‌I did a little unqualified research and found that searching for apps, like browsing through categories, are easier on iTunes and Google Play. So I would guess promotion would be more important when it comes to making apps visible on Amazon Appstore. Still, just guesswork from my side

[ArmandN]

I started selling SparkChess 4 years ago on all major stores: Apple's, Amazon's, Google's, Samsung's and Blackberry's.

For 2014, the income percentage for each store has been:

• Apple AppStore: 58.97%
• Google Play: 33.92%
• Amazon Appstore: 5.33%
• Blackberry AppWorld: 1.20%
• Samsung Store: 0.58%

[Lars Laborious]

Hi, ArmandN. Thanks for the insight. I see you're a small company (Sparkchess seems like a great app, by the way :), so I might be right to assume you haven't spent too much on promotion either? Of course 5% of the sales is better than nothing, but still far from what you earn from Google Play and Apple App Store.

[rewb0rn]

Interesting case Colin, never thought that Amazon might work better than Google Play for some apps. For me it's similar to Armand! I make apps for the German market and I think Amazon devices are quite rare here. Amazon hence only makes about 2% of the revenue that I make on Google Play with 1,600 downloads on Amazon vs 450,000 downloads on Google Play for my flagship app.

I will not drop Amazon anyway because the 2 hours I spend every once in a while to update my apps there is not too much. By the way, did anyone else receive an invitation to the Amazon Adobe Air purchase 2.0 beta? Looks like they are still going to support Air!

[Colin Holgate]

They do support both AIR and Unity already. In fact you don't really have a choice, if you want to do in app purchases you have to use Amazon's own ANE for that. The email was just about version 2 of their ANE, it's not completely new.

[hferreira.80@gmail.com]

Colin,

In my case for GliControl I also use In-App for both Google Play, Amazon (changed to In-App in the last 6 months) and iOS and In-App works great for iOS (I sell basically almost every days), Google Play (there are good and bad days) and in Amazon almost 0 sells.

The cost to have the app in Amazon is almost 0 but the return is also the same!

The essential is that if you want to say that you have the app in "almost" (is missing Windows Store) every marketplace or for some reason you can get money on Amazon, that Amazon is a way to go but if you want to focus (like Adobe did with Flex and Flash ) that is a way to move away!

[rewb0rn]

Colin: Yes I know, I just feared that Amazon was about to abandon Air support because version 2.0 is around for quite a while and until to that email there was no word about an update for the Air ANE

[hferreira.80@gmail.com]

I'm selling GliControl on the last 4 years for:

- Apple iOS

- Apple Mac

- Android Google Play

- Android Amazon

- BlackBerry PlayBook (discontinued by BB)

- BlackBerry 10 (first AIR then APK-AIR)

At the beggining BB was the most strong marketplace side by side with iOS (less competitors for PlayBook and even for BB10).

Nowadays the scenario is:

- iOS is the strongest marketplace but less then before (it's now more dificult to find good apps without advertising);

- Android Google Play continues to sell but 10-15% comparing to iOS

- Android Amazon almost 0 sells

- PlayBook sold thousand of installations (almost no competition)

- BB 10 was also very strong at the begging (with AIR)

- BB 10 thru APK have 2-3 sells/month

On the next few days I will release a new version of GliControl and I will cut Amazon and BlackBerry so I will keep focus on Apple and Android Google Play (I think this answer your question )

If you see around the world, every app keep focus on both iOS and Google Play only (even if the technology allows to publish to more marketplaces).

For the other hand, seems that Windows is growing day by day and with the release of Windows 10 they can rise again (the technologies have this things).