Amazon has announced that, starting today, apps purchased in the Amazon Appstore will dish out a payment equal to Apple’s for in-app purchases and content. Though no tablet has yet managed to show up Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire is working hard to bite at its heels and changes like this are intended to keep them as competitive as possible. Like Apple, Amazon will take a 30 percent cut of all in-app transactions such as content purchases (i.e. magazines) or in-game doo-dads that your kids are buying when you’re not paying attention.
Here’s a bit from AllThingsD about it:
The payments platform utilizes Amazon’s well-recognized and trusted “1-Click” purchasing experience that so many consumers are familiar with from shopping online. By bringing it to mobile, it will make it easy for consumers to purchase a few more coins inside a game or to subscribe to a magazine. But while the announcement sounds fairly basic, the rollout is important for Amazon to get right, since developers’ initial reception to the Appstore was a little strained — and stories of making money on the platform have been mixed.
One reason the Amazon Appstore has gotten a bit of a sneer is because it’s Amazon — not the developer or publisher — who decides how much an app sells for. They even decide to make certain apps free from time to time as a promotional gesture and are not obligated to get the seller’s permission first. Obviously, it’s not clear if this is going to lure developers back into the warm arms of Amazon (especially when the in-app payouts match but don’t exceed Apple’s), but Amazon is clearly thinking about how to take things a bit more seriously.
Source: AllThingsD
