Amazon is taking an interesting approach in its bid to entice developers to use Amazon Web Services for its AI services and IT infrastructure. The company started by becoming part of the app-platform pack, through the reduction of the cut it takes from smaller developers who use the Amazon Appstore to distribute their creations.
From upcoming October, developers who make less than $1 million in revenue in the previous calendar year from the retail giant’s Appstore will be eligible for the new program.
This new fee structure is part of Amazon’s Appstore Small Business Accelerator program.
The cuts
This reduction in commission cuts comes after Google and Apple introduced similar initiatives, aimed at small developers. However, Amazon’s reduction is not the biggest of the lot. Google halved its commission cut in March from 30% to 15%, for in-app purchases of digital goods for developers earning up to $1 million a year from its Play Store.
The reduction mirrored Apple, which also reduced the commission from 30% to 15% for developers that earned $1 million a year from the App Store. The iPhone maker’s program began on January 1.
How Amazon is playing its cards
Even though Amazon’s reduction is smaller, the company is leveraging the fact that it has AWS infrastructure to host developers. Since it is the dominant cloud infrastructure provider with the best infrastructure, developers will still get on board.
When the program becomes operational, all qualifying developers will get an 80/20 revenue share by default, in addition to AWS promotional credits in an amount equivalent to 10% of the revenue, so developers can build on the cloud and enjoy the advantages that come with it.
This applies, even if the developer makes $1 million a year, and then reverts to making less. The year they make more than $1 million, they will not get the 80/20 rate or AWS credits. It only applies if they dip below.
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