“Amazon.com Inc., the world’s largest online retailer, plans to introduce virtual currency that can be used for purchases on the Kindle Fire tablet to entice more developers to create programs for the device,” Danielle Kucera reports for Bloomberg. “Starting in May, consumers will be able to use Amazon Coins to buy applications and virtual merchandise sold within games, the Seattle-based company said today in a statement. The company will give customers ‘tens of millions of dollars’ worth of the currency, which will be accepted in the Amazon Appstore.”
Kucera reports, “Amazon has been targeting developers to improve its app store, giving programmers the ability to make more engaging games and help it chase Apple Inc.’s lead in the tablet market. Apple’s share of the market slipped to 44 percent from 52 percent in the fourth quarter, from a year earlier, while Samsung’s share more than doubled to 15 percent, according to researcher IDC. Amazon’s market share slipped to 12 percent from 16 percent.”
“Developers will continue to get the 70 percent revenue share from purchases made with the coins. After the coin giveaway ends, customers will be able to buy the tokens using Amazon accounts, the company said,” Kucera reports. “Even with its new features, Amazon is playing catch-up with Apple and Google Inc’s Android mobile operating platform. Amazon currently has more than 68,000 apps in its store, compared with 4,000 when the store debuted in March 2011, the company said. Google and Apple have about 700,000 apps apiece in their stores.”
MacDailyNews Take: Not all apps are tablet apps. There are but a pittance of apps designed for Android tablets. Apple currently has over 300,000 apps designed specifically for iPad and iPad mini. Furthermore, Apple has over 800,000 apps currently, not “about 700,000.” Otherwise, they typed snidely, Kucera is correct.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Will these “Amazon Coins” be predicated on customers always having an incompatible number of “Amazon Coins” for their purchase (see: Microsoft Points), thereby always carrying some leftovers which amount to an interest free loan to Amazon, a company with billions of real dollars in profits?