20 June 2012
Amazon Appstore Announces International Sales Opportunities
Hello all you groovy mobile developers! Today Amazon announced support for international sales in the U.K., Germany, Italy, and Spain. Since I haven’t published an app in the Amazon Appstore yet, I wasn’t even aware that these weren’t already options, so tada!
I am a registered developer though, so Amazon sent all their developers an email announcing the news. In the email they said, “You now have the ability to select the countries where you would like your apps to be sold and can set your list prices by marketplace.” So far, I’ve submitted apps to the Google Play Marketplace (I think that’s what they officially call it), and Apple’s App Store and each of them already support international sales. So I guess Amazon is just playing catch up in this area.
Amazon will not require your apps to support multiple languages. But they do encourage you to localize your app for the region you are selling in. That makes sense because it should help improve your sales and make for a better user experience. I think it’s interesting that Amazon isn’t adding this requirement. It’s either because most other countries speak english as a second language already or because Amazon doesn’t want to create friction as they try to grow their developer community. With all the developer attention on Apple and Google, I could see how putting up any kind of obstacle to growth would be a bad idea.
Charles McKeever
Corona Geek
Charles McKeever
Posted at 14:41h, 06 DecemberI wonder how many developers are taking advantage of this.