With Amazon expected to announced its smartphone later this week, now might be a good time for the company to boost developer interest. So it's not likely a coincidence that the company released a study by IDC on Monday -- that Amazon(s amzn) itself commissioned -- showing that current app makers are very satisfied with Amazon's AppStore. And if that wasn't enough, the company says the number of apps it now offers has tripled in the past year with 240,000 titles to choose from.
IDC chatted with 360 developers about their experience selling apps for the Kindle Fire tablets. Here's a summary of the happy news:
- 65% of developers said that Total Revenue on Kindle Fire is the same or better than developers' experience with other platforms.
- 74% of the same developers said that Average Revenue per App/User is the same or better on Kindle Fire than other platforms.
- 76% of developers indicated that the Kindle Fire platform helps them connect with new market segments—an important indicator that the Kindle Fire platform can be a significant source of net-new business and "reach" for developers at a time when new market segments may be difficult to find on competing platforms, the study noted.
The survey has a few choice quotes with developers saying both user engagement and average revenue per download are higher on Amazon's platform than on Android(s goog). There's no mention of iOS(s aapl) or Apple in the study as expected: Amazon uses Android's software for its devices so the apps typically come from Android app makers.
Starting with the first Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon has built quite an app ecosystem on top of Android. The company offers developers a wide array of tools, including in-app purchases, push notifications, scalability with Amazon Web Services, mobile ads, A/B testing and Amazon log-in capabilities.
That's important to attract developers and when combined with company's massive online reach, Amazon is creating opportunities for app makers to reach customers. So all the pieces are in place for developers if Amazon enters the smartphone market as expected later this week. We'll be live at Amazon's event so stay tuned for a first look at what the company has to offer consumers now that it has developers lined up with a growing mobile app store.