Amazon Offers Developers a New Revenue Stream

Amazon announced the availability of a new API that could help mobile app developers gain more revenue through affiliate sales. The Amazon Mobile Associates API offers developers a new straightforward way to monetize apps by offering in-app purchases of physical and digital products that are distributed through Amazon and other Android stores. The revenue share that can be earned can go up to 6% of the total purchase amount and developers don’t need to deal with managing or shipping inventory because everything is handled by Amazon.

This is a smart move from Amazon, who is doing its best to draw developers to their store, in contradiction with Google that it’s not doing much on this task. Amazon is also in a very good position to do this, because they handle all operations regarding the shipping of products. Facebook wasn’t as lucky as Amazon and they just announced the killing of their physical goods delivery in Gifting Service. “Physical gifts do require more work to maintain” said Lee Linden, Facebook’s head of the Gifts program, in an interview.

This move has also good timing considering the latest stats we’ve seen from Canalys, stating that half of top iPad apps are either unavailable or not optimized on Android. Of the top 50 paid and free iPad apps in Apple’s US App Store, based on aggregated daily rankings in the first half of 2013, 30% were absent from Google Play. A further 18% were available, but not optimized for tablet users, offering no more than a smart phone app blown up to the size of a tablet screen. Just 52% of apps had Android versions both available through Google Play and optimized (if only a little) for tablet use. ‘Quite simply, building high-quality app experiences for Android tablets has not been among many developers’ top priorities to date,’ said Canalys Senior Analyst Tim Shepherd.