At its simplest, the current app markets concept provides a platform for developers to write applications and market them directly to consumers. In reality, monetizing apps in a cluttered marketplace has become increasingly difficult. So the owners of app markets (Google, Apple, Amazon, etc.) who do the best job of greasing the wheels for developers will ultimately garner the loyalty needed to keep and grow a dynamic app market.
Amazon is arguably one of the most aggressive in supporting developers. While it is currently still a distant rival to Google and Apple, it is no doubt a serious player. So its announcement this week of changes to its push notification program is just another example of constant tweaks the company is enacting to continue its developer centric philosophy.
These most recent changes to the Amazon Device Messaging push notification services were designed to improve performance, API usability and compatibility with existing messaging service code.
Changes include the removal of throttling limits from the service level which have now been placed at the device level. Developers can also now send a message to up to a 1000 instances of an app at one time with multi-cast batch messaging.
Amazon has also made changes to its API to be very close to 100% compatible with existing GCM code. Amazon is mimicking the Google equivalent API calls whenever possible and has removed any unnecessary server side API differences. And they have made it easier to troubleshoot errors during the registration process by returning more details.