Amazon to cut its Appstore share to help small developers

After Apple and Google, Amazon has now announced to let small developers earn more by reducing its cut in Appstore revenue.

Starting in Q4, for developers that earn less than $1 million in revenue in the previous calendar year, Amazon said it is increasing developer revenue share and adding AWS (Amazon Web Services) credit options.

This will bring total programme benefits up to an equivalent of 90 percent of revenue.

"When the programme launches, all qualifying small developers will receive an 80/20 revenue share by default. Additionally, we will provide AWS promotional credits in an amount equivalent to 10 percent of revenue, so that developers can take advantage of the benefits of building on the cloud," said Palanidaran Chidambaram, Director, Amazon Appstore.


If an eligible developer's revenue exceeds $1 million in the current year, they will revert to the standard royalty rate and no longer receive AWS credits for the rest of that year.

If a developer's revenue falls below $1 million in a future year, the developer will be eligible in the next calendar year.

Called the 'Amazon Appstore Small Business Accelerator Programme,' it will enable developers to build a scalable business by reducing cloud infrastructure costs, while also offering better revenue share to help them get started on their own day one.


"By helping small businesses get started with AWS through credits, we are making it easier for them to build and grow their app businesses," Chidambaram said in a statement.

AWS gives developers easy access to a broad range of technologies so they can innovate faster and build nearly anything they can imagine.

In a recent survey of mobile developers, over 94 per cent indicated they use cloud services in their application development efforts.


With AWS, developers can access more than 200 fully featured services so that they can spend less time managing infrastructure and can focus more attention on customer feedback and growing their app businesses, the company said.

"We also will help developers promote their content in new ways by highlighting smaller developers within our Appstore experience via a new dedicated application row," Amazon said.

Google in March announced to reduce the service fee to 15 per cent for all developers globally including in India on in-app purchases on Play Store from July 1 this year.


Google said it will levy a 15 per cent rate on in-app purchases to all developers for annual sales up to $1 million and take a 30 per cent commission from revenues over the $1 million mark.

Apple last year announced a new developer programme to reduce the charge by half for small businesses that earn up to $1 million in revenue from January 1, 2021, after facing flak for the App Store's 30 per cent standard commission for paid app revenue and in-app purchases.-IANS