The Amazon Fire Phone hasn’t even been out a week, so at this point it’s a little early to speculate on how well the phone might do. Amazon of course isn’t going to leave anything up to chance. They know how a Phone can crash and burn or do poor in sales if it lacks an extensive enough App ecosystem. That is why they’re apparently trying to convince developers to re-do and update their apps for the Fire Phone version of the Fire OS platform. How are they doing this? By giving away up to $15,000 in Amazon coins to those developers, which is quite a lot to say the least. However, Amazon coins can’t pay the bills, and they can’t buy your next meal. I’ll say this, unless Amazon starts allowing the purchase of food and other useful real world goods with Amazon coins, they could be looking at a lower number of interested developers.
There were already a couple problems as to why some people and analysts(like those JP Morgan)think that the Amazon Fire Phone won’t sell that many units in its first year, namely the high price tag when compared to other similar devices and of course, the exclusivity on AT&T’s network. One other reason no one might have never thought about until now though is the apps. While there is no proof of this, if Amazon is willing to pay developers $15,000 in Amazon coins to updates their apps for the Fire Phone, they must have a lack of apps or at least be at a lower number than they wanted for device.
Essentially, Amazon is offering up this amount of cash money to those who have apps that aren’t already supported for the device. So if a developer has an app that is already compatible with Fire OS but isn’t compatible with the updated version of it that we see on the Fire Phone, they are willing to pay 500,000 Amazon coins per application which equals $5,000, for that Dev to make the update happen. So basically they’ll pay developers for up to three apps. If you’re a developer and you already have an app for the platform that you want to update, there are some general guidelines that Amazon has set for the payout can qualify. Those restrictions are as follows: “All apps must implement an app widget using the Home API to display contextual information when the app is brought to the forefront on the device Carousel. Non-game apps must implement either (or both) of the left and right panels using Foundation Controls or Dynamic Perspective SDK. Games must use the Dynamic Perspective SDK to create an in-game experience that responds to a user’s motion relative to the device. Note that games that merely replace swipe-based controls or gyro functionality with head tracking will not qualify. The game must use head tracking to implement an in-game experience. Examples include the ability for a user to pan and zoom the field of view in a game by moving the device back or forward or the ability to rotate the device about any axis to change the viewing angle of the surroundings.” If you’re a developer and your app falls under those guidelines, it looks like you might have some free money coming your way.