Why the Amazon App Store sucks and you should stick with Apple | Hacker News Reader

Why the Amazon App Store sucks and you should stick with Apple

ioshero.com

12 pointsfsiaf6 comments

One of the issues stated was that the app force closed upon opening on a Kindle Fire, 1st generation. While I might be more inclined to dismiss this, the Kindle Fire is only on its second iteration of devices. While the argument could be made for supporting several versions back, only the second generation back.

Subsequently, with the number of sales the first generation has allegedly received, it seems like a much larger issue if the app were to gain any popularity or be promoted on Amazon's storefront. Amazon has valid concerns and is just attempting to guarantee at least function on a very limited number of devices. It's hard to find fault with that.

There are other faults though. When you submit an APK their system allows you to discontinue support for older devices. Therefore there is no consistency between the team and the system.

The system might have been designed to be flexible about that in order to work with some other use cases, but the app team made sure that the process works through their manual intervention. On top of that, they seem to offer a reasonable amount of support to help him become compliant with the submission process.

He could always sell his software via his own store, as Kindles are not restricted to Amazon App Store sold software (which is one difference between the Kindle/Android ecosystem and an iOS one).

Then you're responsible for driving your own sales traffic, which is a lot more work than simply ending up in a category and getting drive-by sales.

The advertising cost wouldn't produce a positive pay-off for an app of that variety.

This actually made me have more respect for the Amazon app review team. Or is it a cleverly disguised marketing message for the Kindle app store to ensure us that customers will not be left out in the cold? ;^)

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