Amazon Launches Underground to Offer Paid Apps for Free
E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc. AMZN released a new app, Underground, which will offer apps free of charge for Android users.
This means that Amazon will now offer more than $10,000 worth of Android paid apps, games and in-app items for free on a permanent basis.
The catalogue of apps on offer includes premium services like PhotoSuite 4 and OfficeSuite Professional 8 and games that may otherwise have in-app purchases, including Angry Birds Slingshot Stella and Frozen Free Fall.
Amazon has partnered with thousands of developers and is reaching a compensation deal with them for the purpose. Amazon will offer a certain sum to the developers on a per-minute played basis in return for them to waive off their standard in-app fees. Those apps will then come with an "actually free" banner within Amazon's app.
As per the citations on Amazon's website, the retailer will pay $0.0020 per minute of usage in the U.S. to developers every time their app is used. Average usage time will be calculated every day down to the millisecond and the total payment rounded off to the nearest penny.
Amazon will also provide a “revenue forecasting calculator” for developers to calculate how much their existing Android app might make under the system.
The launch is good news for users. But the app cannot be downloaded from the Google GOOGL Play store because Google prohibits alternative app stores on its platform.
Downloading this app is a tedious process, unless you are a Fire device user. Users will first have to change their device’s security settings, follow a link, and then finally download the app. Underground comes pre-installed on Fire devices. Therefore, the installation process can pose as big obstacle in the success of the app.
And that is not all. Underground might not make its way to Apple’s AAPL App store because of the difficulty of installing apps on iOS devices from outside the App Store.
Therefore, the launch has us wondering why Amazon would bear such a potentially large bill.
Amazon sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). Another stock worth considering in the technology sector is Manhattan Associates, Inc. MANH, sporting the same Rank as Amazon.
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