Ben Chiang, is an editor at TechNode, a bilingual blog based in China.
Are Amazon’s Kindle tablets and e-readers ready to break into the world’s biggest market? We’ve spotted some Chinese Help documentation for Amazon Kindle devices on the company’s China-facing site in a sign that they may be coming for real this time.
Even though the online documentation was yanked, we have a screenshot of Google’s cached version of the site (see below). Amazon’s China office declined to comment.
This isn’t the first time that Chinese Kindle fans have been disappointed. It was widely reported in 2010 that the popular e-reader was going to enter China after an internal document from Amazon China was leaked to the local press. It showed a Kindle e-reader with the Chinese name Jing Du, which literally translated to ‘Golden Reading.’ But after nearly two years, Kindle devices still haven’t entered the country.
There are already many dirt cheap local e-readers like Shanda’s Bambook and Hanvon’s WISEreader. Both accounted for 19.6 and 59.6 percent of China’s e-reader market in the third quarter of last year, according to a report by Beijing-based technology consultancy AnalysysInternational. Both companies lowered the price of their devices in last year. Now the cheapest models are available at RMB 499 (or about $79).
Because depressing is the new happy, according to Amazon statistics, eight of the top ten most highlighted book passages come from the Hunger Games series. Now granted I didn’t bother doing any research to see what overall percentage of Amazon Kindle purchases ARE Hunger Games books, but that’s only because journalistic integrity is dead and I’d rather talk about my peenor. Some highlights (read: lowlights) from the list:
1. Because sometimes things happen to people and they’re not equipped to deal with them.
4. It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.
5. “I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you,” Peeta replies.
6. “I wish I could freeze this moment, right here, right now, and live in it forever,” he says.
I…don’t even know what to say. “Just please say you weren’t one of the people who highlighted those quotes.” Oh hell no — I ONLY HUNGER GAME IN HARDBACK, SON. I’m lying — I didn’t even know what the Hunger Games were until a friend asked me if I wanted to go see the movie and I found out it wasn’t a competitive eating documentary. Now THAT — that I would go see (especially if theaters ran an all-you-can-eat nachos promotion).
Thanks to Kim, who peppered her email with other quotes from the books that were entirely lost on me, and I’m okay with that (the being lost on me part — not people quoting Hunger Games in Geekologie tips).
View full post on Geekologie – Gadgets, Gizmos, and Awesome
The company looked at its title Tiny Village, a prehistoric-themed simulation game that’s available on iOS, Google Play and Amazon Appstore, and found that when you break it out by platform, Amazon’s store monetizes 80 percent better per user than iTunes. If you break out the tablet market, Amazon Kindles monetize 43 percent better per user than iPads do. So Amazon is doing even better than Apple is, according to their numbers.
This is not to rag on Google Play though. TinyCo’s numbers are actually not that bad when looking at Google’s store. When you look at just Android phones (which would exclude any Amazon devices since they don’t offer a phone), these devices generate 82 percent of the revenue-per-user that iPhones do.
TinyCo’s numbers are a little bit different from recent data out of mobile analytics provider Flurry, which looked at a basket of apps that were available across all three stores. Flurry found that for every $1 generated per user in the iOS store, Amazon’s store generated $0.89 and Google Play produced $0.23. Another big, independent developer also shared some promising stats about Amazon’s Appstore a few weeks ago: Storm8 said it generated $700,000 in revenue during its first month in Amazon’s store.
There are a couple things to think about with any early data out of the Amazon store, however. 1) Google hasn’t had the years experience that Amazon has in processing payments and managing an e-commerce-centric revenue model. 2) They lack the database of credit cards that both Amazon and Apple have, which creates extra friction for consumers when they want to pay and have to enter in their personal information. 3) It’s still early days so Amazon Kindles may just be selling to early adopters, who have more disposable income. Over time, revenue-per-user numbers may trend downward as a device or platform crosses over into the mainstream. 4) Amazon’s Appstore is still only available to U.S. consumers. So the iTunes and Google Play numbers are averaging in customers from less lucrative international markets.
Amazon is now letting developers charge higher prices for in-app purchases thanks to new parental controls it just strengthened.
The company sent out an e-mail to developers today that said:
“With our parental controls functionality now updated, in-app items over $20 may now be submitted via the developer portal.”
Developers depend on these pricier items to make their businesses work since only a small percentage (usually in the single digits) of their users pay in their games. These so-called “whales” are responsible for the bulk of a developer’s revenues. In a study earlier this year, mobile analytics company Flurry found that transactions that were more than $20 make up the majority of revenue for top-grossing games on iOS and Android.
But this business model has caused tension on Apple’s iOS platform. Last year, there were widespread reports that children could run up hundreds of dollars in purchases on their iPods, iPhones or iPads to their parents’ chagrin. Apple has a 15-minute window for purchases after an iOS device owner types in their password. After the 15 minutes passes, they have to re-enter their password if they want to buy more.
Amazon famously has a one-click payments flow, which in a normal case could make a Kindle especially risky to hand to a child or toddler. But the device has parental controls. If they’re set up properly, all purchases require an Amazon.com password or a 4-digit PIN. Kindle owners can set this up from the ‘Settings’ menu on their device.
Higher price points for in-app purchases should also help Amazon boost its reputation as an app store that’s more lucrative per user than Google Play. Another Flurry study showed that the average revenue per user on Amazon’s store is about 89 percent of what it is on iOS. Meanwhile, Google Play has an average revenue per user that’s about one-quarter of what it is on iOS.
Amazon is taking the wraps off a new in-app purchasing service today in an effort to make its app store competitive with what Apple and Google offer developers. That should let developers for Amazon’s appstore tap into what has emerged as the most lucrative way of monetizing apps over the past year: staying free but offering virtual currency or other items for purchase inside the app.
After undergoing testing for several months, the new in-app purchasing service is now available for everyone. It’s based off Amazon’s one-click buying experience and applies to digital content like in-game currency, expansion packs, upgrades and subscriptions from inside apps and games.
But as I pointed out last week, the interesting part of this story is not whether Amazon is doing in-app purchases. It’s obvious that the company would do this.
The question is how is it setting up the pricing? You see, Amazon has historically pushed hard for the power to set prices for books and other goods. When it unveiled the appstore last year, it had the ability to discount apps at will. Developers would either earn 20 percent of what they wanted to charge or 70 percent of whatever Amazon ultimately charged — whatever was higher. That irked developers, naturally.
With in-app purchases, it turns out Amazon still has the ability to discount in-app items. But the developers will always earn 70 percent of the list price or what they wanted to charge for it, according to Amazon appstore’s director Aaron Rubenson.
“We’re just following the paradigm that’s out there with the 70-30 split,” he said. “This is a little bit different from the revenue share that we have for paid app sales. We looked at each purchase case separately.”
This is an interesting little compromise that lets Amazon keep its pricing power, while ensuring that developers see no losses as a result of it.
It’s also my understanding that Amazon isn’t mandating that developers only use the company’s in-app purchasing service. That said, Google’s in-app purchasing technology won’t work on the Kindle Fire, according to Rubenson. For that device, developers will have to use Amazon’s system. But on other tablets and phones, developers can use any number of in-app purchasing systems. That’s different from other app stores: Apple prohibits developers from using other in-app purchasing system for digital content. Google technically has the same rule although it hasn’t really enforced it until recently.
Here is the fine print if you want to read it yourself. It looks like there is a special exception for news media products:
4. Royalty; List Price. For each sale of an In-App Product, we will pay you a Royalty equal to 70% of the List Price as of the time of purchase. However, no Royalty is due for (a) In-App Products with a List Price of $0.00, (b) Subscription In-App Products listed in our News or Magazine categories (or similar or successor categories) that we make available to end users at no charge as part of free trial subscriptions or other promotional offers of up to 30 days (or any longer period you approve), or (c) other Subscription In-App Products that we make available to end users at no charge as part of free trial subscriptions or other promotional offers that you approve. For sales of Subscription In-App Products to renewing subscribers, your Royalty will be calculated based on the lower of (i) the then current List Price and (ii) the List Price in effect at the time the applicable end user first subscribed. A Royalty is due only for sales for which we have received final payment from or on behalf of an end user. If an In-App Product is purchased using a credit card or bank account deduction mechanism, final payment will be deemed to have occurred when the applicable credit card company or bank has fully settled the payment for the applicable purchase. “List Price” has the same meaning with respect to In-App Products as the meaning set forth in the Agreement with respect to Apps. You will update the List Price for each In-App Product as necessary to ensure it meets the List Price requirements.
In-app payments are something that Amazon is very well-positioned to do as the company has had a decade to build up expertise in online transactions. Coincidentally, it’s an area that Google is historically weak in providing. And developers are noticing. With about 34,000 apps and a very attractive base of paying customers, Amazon’s app store is becoming one to watch among mobile developers.
Below is a video explaining Amazon in-app purchases plus some excerpts from the documentation that show the differences between Amazon and Google’s systems:
