only 35,000 units during first 25 days of launching. This has led the Amazon mobile app
developers worried about their future. Many app developers who had high hopes and adopted
Amazon app development are now frustrated at the poor revenue generated against the time
and money spent. They are not at all looking forward to develop future apps for Fire phone.
Opinions of Amazon mobile app developers
Many app developers who invested in Amazon are not ready to support it because of the limited
customer base and insufficient earnings. The app usage did not meet expectations and it is
better to move to other platforms. It is not on app development priority list since the phone itself
failed to attract customers.
What Amazon has to say?
Amazon responded with developer testimonials and said that they hold a strong relation with
their developers. They held the view that average revenue or some users of Fire phone was
much higher than other platforms like iOS or Android. They cited the success of Amazon app
store to backup their claim. But the details are focused on Amazon app store’s performance and
not that of Fire phone. As a developer, you might be worried as to how you would go about
things if a client hired you to develop an app for Amazon, and understandably so. However,
things might seem to get a bit clearer soon.
Initial buzz, ultimate die down
The features of Fire phone were believed to create quite a stir in the market. Its unique features
are Firefly and Dynamic Perspective. With Firefly users can scan products or other pictures to
person an online search. It can also be used to choose a product on Amazon. Dynamic
Perspective is responsible for adjusting the perspective of 3D pictures by using sensors to pick
up the direction of the user’s gaze.
Mobile app developers based their apps on these features hoping for good ROI. But the hype
died down as the much highlighted special features disrupted user experience. Launching the
device exclusively on At&T was also not helpful. The price of the phone was reduced to 99
cents with a two year contract and they had to write off $ 170 million of unsold goods.
Limited yet valuable consumer base
Amazon is still high in its effort to please mobile app developers by releasing guides and
suggestions for making apps for Amazon. All devices of Amazon including Kindle Fire use the
same Android version and it is easy for developers to tune their app for Fire phone.
There are 240,276 apps for the phone on Amazon app store, but very few utilize the special
features of the phone. A Fire phone user is said to generate 5 times the revenue generated by
an Android user. It is easy to adapt the app to Amazon easily, but difficult to develop one based
on phone specialties. Amazon has to strengthen its relation with developers before they launch
the next phone.