Developers can now submit URLs for their HTML5 web apps and mobile websites and have Amazon offer that content to millions of Kindle Fire and Amazon Appstore customers in the same, convenient way as native apps.
Amazon said Web developers and content publishers have historically faced numerous challenges when building, optimizing and distributing web apps for mobile devices.
Previously, third party software was needed to convert mobile web content to native apps to participate in an appstore, and on-device debugging was a challenging and necessary prerequisite for achieving strong performance on a large variety of web runtimes.
“We’ve heard from developers that making their web apps available for mobile devices is hard because many times it means rewriting their app, which takes extra time and often requires third party tools,” said Mike George, Vice President of Amazon Appstore, Games and Cloud Drive.
By launching support for HTML5 web apps in the Mobile App Distribution Program, George said Amzon is giving web developers the tools they need and all the benefits that native apps already enjoy in the Amazon Appstore and on Kindle Fire.
"This opens up new possibilities—starting with faster discovery, access to tools for increased monetization, and the ability to reach new customers for greater exposure,” he said.
The launch of the web app support in the Amazon Appstore is the latest offering in an array of services that make Amazon the most complete end-to-end ecosystem for developers building, monetizing and marketing apps and games.