Amazon App Developers Can Fire Up Android and Web Apps With Kindle Fire HDX Powered By OS 3.0 Mojito

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Amazon has officially launched its new Kindle Fire HDX featuring a new 7-inch or 8.9-inch HDX display, quad-core 2.2 GHz processor with 3x the processing power, twice the memory of the previous model, 11 hours of battery life, and dual stereo speakers with Dolby Digital Plus audio.

From a consumer standpoint, probably the most innovative aspect of the new device is the old school customer service offered by the “Mayday button.” Press the button and Amazon says that it will connect users to a customer service representative in 15 seconds or less, or at least that’s their goal. Its an ambitious, expensive endeavor, however it should continue to propel the image of the Kindle as an everyperson user friendly device, and convince non technophiles to use more services and, hopefully for app developers, access more apps.

Which brings us to the new Fire OS 3.0 "Mojito," which Amazon states introduces hundreds of new and upgraded features, Amazon-exclusive services, platform updates and more. Promising that if an app runs on Android, it will run on Fire OS, the new operating system adds cloud services, a content-first user interface, built-in media libraries, productivity apps and low-level platform enhancements to integrate Amazon's digital content and improve performance.

Fire OS 3.0 is built from Android 4.2.2 and its runtime libraries and Amazon says that 75% of the tablet apps that they tested that run on Android also run on Fire OS with no additional development work. The Amazon developer website provides advice for those apps that don’t run properly on the device.

With the new OS, Amazon is emphasizing its open arms approach to web apps using HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS, promoting Amazon's GPU-accelerated web app runtime built on the open-source Chromium browser. Amazon is offering web app testing, monetization opportunities, security advice, and more in an effort to keep web apps as close to its OS as possible, and of course, create revenue streams as a result.

Other news for developers include new Kindle Fire emulators and the Amazon AVD (Android Virtual Device) Launcher which allows developers to develop and test Kindle Fire android apps without using a physical device. The AVD Launcher provides a user interface in which developers can create and manage Android Virtual Devices, to help simplify the process of creating and launching emulators.

Interestingly, Amazon is also testing the waters of the enterprise mobile category with its promotion of Fire OS 3.0’s use of encryption of the user partition to secure data on the new device. Users can connect to secure enterprise Wi-Fi networks at work and securely connect to corporate networks via a native or third-party VPN client while away from the office. Amazon’s Mobile Device Management solutions allow IT managers to provide enterprise level mobile management solutions through the access of Amazon's Whispercast service as well as access to third-party partners including AirWatch, Citrix, Maas360, MobileIron, and SOTI.

All in all, there’s all kinds of good stuff for developers with the new OS/device combo, check out more here. Since BlackBerry seems to be fading, it looks like it’s a four way app race between iOS, Android, Windows 8, and Web Apps, and a heavyweight hybrid hardware/retail/cloud services/etc company like Amazon that is embracing two of the four has the potential to make things a lot more interesting!