Quote:
Originally Posted by jswinden
It seems like the Kindle for Android app is the unwanted, bastard child of Kindleland. Amazon usually updates this app long after they have updated the other apps, and it lags way behind in features. Clearly they don't put their A Team on this project. It seems so strange that the iOS app is always lightyears ahead of the Android app. I don't mind of course since I much prefer iOS to Android.
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Amazon has its priorities, and when it comes to Android, their A Team is going to be working on the Fire. They cannot afford for that to fail, as it most likely would if they cut back on Fire development. Hence a relatively mediocre reading app, no Instant Video app, etc. They can get away with this because Android isn't making much money for anyone, and the return on investment is low. Google itself does not seem to expend much energy on Google Play Books, so Amazon doesn't have to do much to match up to it.
iOS gets love because Apple users almost by definition are willing to spend more money than the average person, and ROI is much higher. Many Apple customers are Amazon customers, but at this point they are not going to trade in their iPads for a Fire, and lose access to their iTunes library. So it is important to offer a decent alternative to iBooks and entice with Amazon Instant Video, offer web storefront experiences optimized for iPad, make sure Audible and Amazon MP3 apps can access iTunes library, support Air Play etc.
I would expect an update to the Android app in the next week or two. If you go back and look at the version history, there have been several updates specifically for Nexus 7 issues and this seems to be another one.