Amazon Underground is looking to change the way developers make money from their apps. Thus far, developers have profited from in-app purchases (IAP) while offering the app itself for free. This “freemium” model has been working quite nicely for everyone. That is, until Amazon Underground came out with a new idea.
The Guardian reports that Amazon Underground wants to absorb all IAP and instead pay developers $0.002 per minute that consumers use their apps. Amazon Underground has actually gone so far as to tout an “actually free” slogan.
This means that users can still buy items within the app but any actual money that would have been spent by the user is now shouldered by Amazon Underground which makes the apps 100% free to its users.
“We’ve made this possible by working out a new business model with app and game developers: we’re paying them a certain amount on a per-minute played basis in exchange for them waiving their normal in-app fees,” explains Amazon in a letter.
This new development comes months after a misunderstanding between Google and Amazon wherein the Amazon app functioned as a separate app store within Google Play, a feature barred by Google.
Amazon has also published a revenue forecasting calculator for developers. It allows them to make accurate predictions for their own profits using the new model versus IAP. Data like how much the app was used and how much revenue it generated the previous month are used to predict possible profits.
The Amazon Underground app must be downloaded from the Amazon site itself. Apps that are “actually free” will remain to be so long as the developers decide to keep their apps in Amazon. So far, this model is effective in four countries only, US, UK, Germany, and France.
Games currently offered by the Amazon app include Fruit Ninja, Star Wars: Recon Missions, Angry Birds Slingshot Stella, Jetpack Joyride, and Goat Simulator. Significant apps like OfficeSuite Professional 8 is also available.
The particular difficulty of installing apps on iOS outside the App Store makes the Amazon Underground app almost certainly inaccessible to iPhone users.
