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From Amazon:

You Can Now Distribute Apps in Nearly 200 Countries Worldwide on Amazon
Today we announced that the Amazon store is now available to millions of customers in nearly 200 countries around the world, giving them global access to Amazon’s broad selection of quality apps.

Customers will be able to access a large and growing catalog of apps and games from Amazon directly from their computers or Android phones and tablets, including Kindle Fire, and you will quickly have a much larger audience around the world to download and enjoy your apps and games. For a full list of countries offering our store visit the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog. We also announced that Kindle Fire is available for pre-order starting today, shipping to over 170 countries beginning on June 13.

This is a great opportunity for you to reach millions of new customers who can now discover apps and games online, from their Android mobile and Kindle Fire devices within our store. If you have country availability for your apps set to all countries where Amazon sells apps then you do not need to do anything to take advantage of this opportunity. Otherwise, you will need to make your apps available internationally by adding the countries you want your apps to be available in. Here is more information on how you can do that.

Get started today by submitting your app on the Amazon Mobile App Distribution Portal.

Stay connected via our Distribution Blog, and follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Best regards,

Amazon Mobile App Distribution Team

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From Samsung

Dear seller,
This is the Seller Office team.
Thank you for your continued support of the Samsung Apps Seller Office.We would like to announce that the Seller Office will now be providing paid services in more countries.
 Effective from
– 15th May (Wednesday)
 New countries getting paid service
– United States
– Global Group A (23 countries): Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Nepal, Macao, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Albania, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Laos, Afghanistan
※ When registering/updating a paid application, it will automatically be sold in the newly added countries if the option below is selected in Detailed Country & Price Settings.
※ Selection by group is available for Global group A, Pan-Latin, Pan-Arab, Pan-Africa, and Global group B.

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The market for mobile app development is expected to grow from $25.2bn in 2013 to $92bn in 2018 according to Ridgecrest Capital Partners latest research study (which includes an honorable mention of CodeNgo). Backed by data from among others Vision Mobile, Ridgecrest lists a number of companies that have received VC funding in the space, and they also list companies that are likely to be the consolidators in the industry.

Ridgcrest also points to the complexity of being a mobile app developer, a concept that readers of this post are likely to not be a stranger of:

Mobile complexity (Source: Ridgecrest Capital Partners)

So how big of a problem is the complexity? Well, where there is opportunity, there is talent, and talent deals well with complexity. Asymco points out in a recent article that “Apps are becoming the universal medium for entertainment and iTunes the universal distributor. Talent is catching on to this faster than those who manage and distribute their work. The inevitable result will be a mass migration of talent away from the established content industries.”  While we disagree on iTunes being the universal distributor (surprise), especially given Asymco’s love affair with Apple, their main point on the rise of apps is quite compelling. Apps are consuming more and more of consumers time, and has taken over for where other content types, like music, has been faltering. Bring on the talent.

“We believe the mobile applications space has reached an inflection point and thus will gain increased interest on both the funding and M&A front.“

– Ridgecrest Capital Partners

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Games are undoubtedly one of the most important category for mobile apps. And we strongly believe we have only seen the beginning of the explosion that is to become mobile gaming. As games permeate from entertainment to education, there are several indicators indicating the action is moving to a smaller screen.

The big guys struggle online
Zynga Revenue (Source: Zynga)An excellent article in The Motley Fool blog discusses the fate of Zynga. Zynga has seen huge drop in revenue numbers as they struggle to stay relevant. Partly this may be lack of new titles, partly a drop in interest on Facebook – but mainly it is because they see all the action moving to mobile.

As referenced in the article: “Smart phones are the go-to market for literally any struggling software company, but more importantly Mark Pincus believes that social video gaming may be more successful in the mobile space” – we tend to agree with Pincus. The ultimate social device surely should be the most suitable for social gaming.

Mobile is also taking over from console
Mobile games industry veterans will arguably say that mobile games were never intended to take over from console games, rather mobile games are more about killing time rather than an immersive hard core experience. Yet new data shows that increasingly tablets and other devices are increasingly “stealing” audiences from consoles.

Moreover though, we expect not necessarily the battle of mobile vs console to be the main issue, rather we expect a multi-screen/multi-device experience, where all released titles whether online or on console will have a mobile component. The experience may be replicated in full or in part, but that depends on the type of game and the experience the developer is trying to create. Successful games companies in the future will become expert in cross device user engagement – and that engagement will vary depending on device and context.

The hindrance? Payments
Payments hold a key for revenue generation on mobile. Strict demands from app stores and/or mobile carriers to use their payment SDKs, means maintaining multiple SKUs and payment integrations, something most developers do not have resources to go after, other than the big guys. Luckily, a solution may be in the works — but more on this in a later post.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on this. What do you think the growth in mobile gaming will be? Take our poll:

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From Samsung:

[Seller Office] Notification regarding Improvements to the Accounting Service
Dear seller,
This is the Seller Office Team.
Thank you for your continued support of the Samsung Apps Seller Office.We would like to inform you of the following improvements to the accounting service:
 Simultaneous fund transfer to Agent and Commisionaire models
– The following changes have been made to lower the fees paid by Sellers:
– Effective from : January, 2013
– (Before) Separate fund transfer to Agent and Commisionaire models.
(After) Simultaneous fund transfer without distinction between Biz models if fund transfers from both Agent and Commisionaire models exist.
 Issue of a combined report including Financial Report and Settlement Report
– To prevent any confusion that may occur because of improvements to the fund transfer process, the following changes will be made to Financial Report and Settlement Report:
– Effective from : May, 2013
– (Before) Distinction of Agent and Commissionaire models in Financial and Settlement reports.
(After) Integration of Biz Model in Financial and Settlement reports.
If you have questions, select Seller Office > Support > Contact us for inquiries.
We will continue to work hard in order to provide you with the best possible service.

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From Samsung:

[Seller Office] Service improvements in April
Dear seller,
This is the Seller Office Team.
Thank you for your continued support of the Samsung Apps Seller Office.In consideration of your valuable advice and opinions, we will further improve the Seller Office service for your convenience. Please note the following information when using Seller Office.
 Effective from
– Thursday 25th April. 2013
 Major changes
1. Launch of service in Spanish
– In a move that we hope you find useful, the Seller Office now offers its services in Spanish, to help it expand into new potential markets.
– Using the service in Spanish: Change the language settings at the top of the page to Spanish.
2. Alterations to supported Icon Image formats
– (Before) GIF, JPG, PNG → (After) PNG
※ For revisions, you must use the changed format for your icons (the existing format can still be used if you are not revising.)
3. Screenshot size addition
– (Before) 480×800 pixels in Portrait mode, 800×480 pixels in Landscape mode
– (After) 480×800 or 1080×1920 pixels in Portrait mode, 800×480 or 1920×1080 pixels in Landscape mode
※ If you register an image with a high resolution, it will appear optimized for the latest device.
4. Changes to items being registered as application banners
– (Before) Registration by channel
– (After) Registration by banner size (General/Extra)
General sized banners : 500×240 (Common)
Extra sized banners : 1080×648 (Android), 480×106 (bada)
※ We recommend registering all banner images in different sizes for marketing purposes at Samsung Apps.
If you have questions, select Seller Office > Support > Contact us for inquiries.
We will continue to work hard in order to provide you with the best possible service.

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From Amazon

Dear Mobile App Developer,

Soon, Amazon will open distribution in nearly 200 additional countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, and even Papua New Guinea and Vatican City. Many new consumers will be able to access a large and growing catalog of apps and games from Amazon. This means that your apps and games will quickly be available to a much larger audience.


In addition to the new distribution, we’re also adding the ability to price your apps in CAD (Canadian Dollars) and BRL (Brazilian Reals) today. You can also submit localized descriptions for Brazil (Portuguese) today, and this feature will be available soon for Canada (French and English).

Recently, we announced new opportunities to monetize your apps on Amazon, including our new Mobile Ads API with competitive eCPM, and the fact that we will be distributing tens of millions of dollars worth of Amazon Coins to U.S. Amazon customers in May, to spend on apps, games, or in-app purchases; and developers will receive their standard revenue share for these purchases. We offer tools to make implementing our APIs simple, including the new, fasterKindle Fire emulators , and the Amazon Mobile App SDK Eclipse Plugin .

If you’re new to distributing apps on Amazon, get started at the Mobile App Distribution Portal . If you already have apps on Amazon, no actions are required. For the full list of countries we’re distributing apps in, click here . 

 

 

 

 

 

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From Amazon:

Submit for Approval by April 25th to Take Advantage
Amazon Coins is launching in May. Tens of millions of dollars worth of Amazon Coins will be given to U.S. customers for free to spend on Kindle Fire apps, games, and in-app items. If your apps are already available for sale to U.S. customers on Kindle Fire, then no action is required. If you have new apps or games ready, submit them by April 25th so they’ll have the best chance of being available for Amazon Coins purchases at the launch of the program.

For more information on Amazon Coins, click here. Stay tuned to the Distribution Blog for more updates and announcements regarding the launch of Amazon Coins.

New Kindle Fire Emulators
Wouldn’t it be nice if emulators weren’t so slow? The new Kindle Fire emulator startup and run time with the x86 system images is now close to that of an actual Kindle Fire. It also looks and acts the same–if you’ve used our standard ARM system images before, there’s no change in how you use the new x86 system images.

To learn more and download the new emulator, click here.

Amazon Mobile App Distribution Blog
Have you visited our blog recently? Here are some posts you may have missed:

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From Samsung

Dear seller,
Thank you for using Samsung Apps Seller Office; we deeply appreciate your support for our service.The Flexible Price function has been available from the Seller Office since December 13, 2012.
Some Paid applications may have been sold at lower price because of the Price Tier applied for specific countries prior to the application of Flexible Price; because of this, we recommend that you use the Price Change function to set the price with the latest price standard.

If this applies to you, check the price of the applications you have for sale and adjust it again using the Price Change function according to the current price standard and exchange rate without having to complete the Certification process again; we recommend that you do this because setting the local price with the current standard will help you increase sales.
 Price Change
– You can change the price of Paid applications without completing the Certification process again.
– Any price you change with the Price Change function will be applied within 2 hours.
– Go to Seller Office > Applications > My Applications > On Sale > Price Change.
 Flexible Price
– You can set the prices of your applications and items to what you want.
– You can enter the standard price to automatically set the price for each country based on the exchange rate.
※ However, if you use Phone Bill as the payment method the amount is fixed and the price closest to the Phone Bill payment will be recommended automatically.
If you have questions, select Seller Office > Support > Contact us for inquiries.
We will continue to work hard in order to provide you with the best possible service.

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The folks at The App Entrepreneur posed an interesting article about whether apps for your TV will be growth area in the future.  TAE is somewhat skeptic, pointing to OS challenges and the like. They also argue that the format may not be great for apps:

TV apps that would probably work would be gaming ones – instead of a laptop or mobile screen the user will now have a bigger screen, even in HD which would make gamers happy. They could also work in the communications category where instead of the whole family trying to squeeze behind a laptop camera on a Skype video call, there’s more space and better visuals. But does this however mean future TVs will have cameras on them?

Now this is where we disagree. Yes, browsing Facebook on a giant screen may or may not be your cup of tea, nor playing Angry Birds in 50 inch screen (although at CodeNgo we are geeky enough to fantasize about this).  The real power of TV apps comes when they interact with the programming.  This is of course possible today on tablets, where really cool interactive apps have been developed to enhance the TV viewing experience.

Other companies like ConnecTV are really focusing on the social aspect of watching, which lends itself perfectly to a bigger screen, as you would not have to shift your viewing focus to the tablet from the larger screen. Check out this video to learn more about these guys:

[yframe url=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkYPcqLWoMU’]

We think TV apps will come, and it will be huge. What the tipping point will be is hard to predict, as obviously you need a large installed base (smart TVs) with a well functioning eco-system for developers. We know for a fact there are app stores that are quite serious about this. The beauty of this of course is that CodeNgo stands ready to support these kind of apps too – continuing to be your one stop shop for self publishing.