Android Market changes

Now that Amazon has opened up their own App Store, Google has *FINALLY* added statistics to their own developer tools. The statistics only go back to Dec 21, 2010 but it's better than nothing. Now I can see the Android versions that my user base is composed of, the most popular devices, and countries that the users  are from and how my percentages compare to the Android Market averages.

Amazon Android Market

Amazon has announced that they are creating their own Android application marketplace and have opened it to developers. I immediately went and created an account and submitted the TWiT app for review. The reports capabilities already look impressive, but then again, compared to the non-existent reports on the Google Market anything would be impressive.

Like all app developers I get regular emails from alternative App stores wanting to carry more applications. I think the biggest of these has been 10-15K applications so I haven't even bothered looking at them. But this is Amazon. The only negative comments so far are that Amazon wants a $99/year subscription to have an developer account and that they require three screenshots. Now, for me, the screenshot requirement is just a minor annoyance but I can think of some Android applications that don't even have 3 different screens that the user would see. The annual subscription though will definitely restrict the number of developers that will use Amazon's marketplace since so many Android applications are free and have no income whatsoever.

We shall see what we shall see.