Amazon moves to reduce Appstore app fragmentation with new Device Targeting feature

Recognising that developers consistently push different versions of their apps in mobile marketplaces on different platforms, Amazon has today introduced a new ‘Device Targeting’ feature, providing opportunities to push different versions of an app and reduce fragmentation on its marketplace.

With Device Targeting, Amazon says developers can offer different Android APKs (the binaries that feature an app’s assets), making it easier to push an HD version of an app to a Kindle Fire HD and keeping the standard app available for the original Kindle Fire.

By utilising the new feature, developers with multiple apps (think Rovio with different versions of its Angry Birds titles for Android smartphones and tablets) can consolidate an app’s reviews, pageviews and downloads. With less apps on the store, customers are likely to be less confused by the multiple versions of an available app.

To implement the feature in their apps, developers can tune their titles and submit them to the Appstore, checking the devices that they will be tailored for. At the moment, a total of four individual APKs can target non-Amazon Android devices, Kindle Fire (both old and new versions) and the Kindle Fire HD 7”.

Amazon says it hopes to add support for the Kindle Fire HD 8.9 soon.

For customers, Device Targeting is invisible. They download the title of their device and Amazon will serve the correct app based on the screen and size of their device’s display.

Amazon says this will enhance “app brand messaging, build customer trust and loyalty, decrease catalog fragmentation, and strengthen [developer] footprints on Amazon.”