Amazon’s Android Strategy Interfering with Google Too?
A German blog, Androidnews has recently posted the screenshots of mockup pages of Amazon Android App Store that show the Amazon undercutting the Android App Market by offering apps at reduced prices. As reported by the blogger, he typed http://www.amazon.com/apps for some fun and surprisingly that led him to the microsite, which now directs to the Kindle Store, showing a horizontal slider and 48 app icons. It listed some popular Android apps, tools and games like Zenonia, Raging Thunder II, SetCPU, The Moron Test and SwiftKey at a price lower than in Google market. A popular Android app Call of Duty: Modern Warefare: Force Recon was also reported listed at a lower price.
But this is not something that Amazon is doing for the very first time, as it also angered up the book publishers by pricing Kindle e-books far below physical books. This in turn forced Amazon to revise its pricing strategy in this sector too. Although the store has not been launched yet, it is expected to see “Angry Birds Rio” as the first game in the app store, starting from March 22. Having changed its pricing strategy, it also discounted several bestselling Kindle games to $0.99, for a limited time. These apps include Scrabble, Chess, Texas Hold’em Poker, Soduku Unbound, and four volumes of New York Times’ crossword challenges and were selling originally for $1.99-$4.99 each.
Amazon is also taking several new initiatives for Kindle’s distribution, as it signed a contract with AT&T. From now on, you’ll be able to get this e-reader from AT&T store chains too. Besides this physical distribution, Kindle will also be available as an app on Windows Phone 7. In its digital app version, it will come with some bonus features as “personalized book recommendations on your Kindle app home screen and the ability to send a book suggestion to a friend from any book in your library without leaving the app.”
It seems that Amazon is undergoing quite an upswing as it sees high earnings even in a downturned global environment. The net income of the company also raised 16% in comparison with the same quarter of the foregoing year. Possibly, the credit goes to the Kindle, contributing to Amazon’s low operating margin.
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