App Marketing Conversations: Amazon App Store Now Supports HTML 5 Apps

Whatever happened to that whole “HTML 5 is going to crush native apps” argument?  

For a while it seemed like the whole mobile community was convinced that HTML5 was going to take over the market, rendering app store and native app development obsolete. Well, that hasn’t come to pass. So, with the news that Amazon’s App Store is now accepting HTML5 apps, we thought it was a good opportunity to discuss HTML5 again and to dig into if Amazon’s presence will meaningfully change the current trajectory of app creation in mobile. We discussed several aspects of this announcement, including:

• Does the Kindle Fire help boost the relevance of HTML5?
• Should marketers watch this closely?
• Is this more important to specific verticals?

Do you think Amazon’s announcement is going to meaningfully impact the future of mobile app development? Please share in the comments.

Be sure to check out the Gamehouse segment from this week’s App Marketing Conversations, talking about burst campaigns and their declining efficacy and learn from MobileDevHQ about some conflicting reports about Android’s market share.

Transcript:

Robi: Good morning. Welcome to another App Marketing Conversations. I’m
Robi Ganguly, CEO of Apptentive. As always, I’m joined by Ryan Morel of
Gamehouse and Ian Sefferman of MobileDevHQ, and our occasional guest,
Darwin.

Ian: More than occasional.

Robi: So, we are going to talk in this segment a little bit about some news
out of Amazon, who continues to introduce new opportunities for app
marketers to grow their businesses in the Amazon Appstore. The recent
release from them is that you can now produce HTML5 apps and then submit
them to the Amazon Appstore.

First off, we’ve talked about HTML5 quite a bit over the past year plus.
There’s a lot of back and forth about who should be investing in it and
why. Does this make a meaningful change in how you think about HTML5 apps?

Ian: No. It’s interesting because it’s as if there’s a dying patient in an
emergency room who’s flatlined, and these are the paddles which is like,
maybe if we’re really lucky, are going to resuscitate the guy. But,
fundamentally I for a long time wanted to be all in on HTML5. I thought it
was a great idea. I actually thought somebody needed to build an HTML 5 app
store.

But, the more time I spent in the ecosystem the better Native became to me
for so, so many reasons. And platform owners care about it. Does Amazon
really have a meaningful amount of sway as a platform owner? It’s not
convincing to me that it’s going to make a huge difference.

Robi: What about you?

Ryan: I’m a long dissident of HTML5 content. I’ve never liked it. I
probably never will. But, I think it’s an interesting play from Amazon’s
perspective. It’s maybe a really, really long game where they say, “Hey
this is our potential way to access consumers on other people’s platforms
for content other than what Amazon traditionally sells, books, et cetera.”

Assuming that they’re doing this the way that I would expect Amazon to do
it, like if I have an iPad I could go to Amazon’s Appstore and buy HTML5
content and play them in my browser. That opens Amazon up to content sales,
to a vastly larger number of hardware platforms that they would never be
able to obtain themselves. So, I think it’s really interesting if the
content works.

Robi: Yes. And I think that you’ve got to be assuming that’s the bet
they’re making internally. That they think that, around the content
strategy that they’re developing, there’s an extension that they can make
into the broader market.

I think the other aspect of this that’s really fascinating is that they’re
anchoring it around the benefits to Kindle Fire owners and Kindle Fire HD
owners, that those devices in particular are being perfectly tuned for
HTML5 apps delivered by them. And I think that becomes interesting just
because they have this core opportunity to promote it, to push.

So, if you just pull that out. If you’re a marketer and you’re in sort of
the content space. Let’s say entertainment. Do you spend more time looking
at this as a result if you’re seeing already some existing meaningful
traffic growth for Kindle Fire?

Ryan: I think if you have existing content or have easy ways to produce
HTML5 content, then yes, you should think about it. But, I wouldn’t go
running out the door hiring HTML5 and JavaScript developers to produce for
it. We have seen, just over the last couple of days, that Amazon’s tablet
share, they’re now not even in the top five or seven or something like
that, so, uber-cyclical business. Yeah, I wouldn’t go jumping out the
window for it.

Ian: So this brings up a good point which is, if Amazon’s goal is to access
platforms that it doesn’t otherwise have access to, by you as an
independent developer and marketer developing for Amazon’s HTML5 store, you
could just go straight to those platforms and have a better experience
anyways.

Ryan: Yeah.

Ian: So, why wouldn’t you?

Ryan: Yeah.

Robi: Well, maybe part of the argument is if you don’t have the resources,
but you do have decent HTML5 experience, like maybe you’re Hulu and going,
“Hulu.com is okay on the tablet.” And maybe this is a better place to
promote yourself and connect billing systems, perhaps. What about the
search implications around this?

Ian: Yeah, I think that’s where it starts to get interesting. Because HTML5
apps are by their nature easier to search. They’re easier to index. They’re
easier to get deep linking and deep indexing into the content that’s going
on there. That makes search a whole lot better. Quite frankly, Amazon is
great at content search. If you look at the numbers, I think Google is
obviously the biggest search engine. Then it’s probably either YouTube or
Facebook. But, Amazon is not far down the line.

Ryan: Yeah.

Ian: They’re certainly in the top seven to ten search engines. So, I think
Amazon will do a great job of understanding what an app is actually about
in a way that we haven’t seen before. That allows a marketer to really
boost engagement and downloads.

Ryan: Yeah, and the other thing I would add is I think in the short term it
might be interesting especially if you have HTML5 content and Native
content. Use HTML5 as opportunities for trials, if that’s easier, and then
upsell people into the Native version for its fuller functionality or
whatever. I think that’s a really balanced strategy, potentially.

Ian: Yeah. So, this is one question, do we think Amazon will be paying
developers to get into this platform in the way that Microsoft pays
developers to build Windows phone apps? Do we think Amazon will, and should
you be going after those dollars?

Robi: I would say I’d be very surprised if they had a structured plan
around paying developers to do that stuff. That seems outside of their
normal behavior around cost structures and the way that they think about
building businesses. Even if they did, it’s not clear that that’s
beneficial to the people who are accepting those dollars from Microsoft.

Ryan: Yeah, or the platform owner themselves, right.

Ian: Yeah.

Ryan: Because there are plenty of platform examples where they have
content, but they still don’t have users. I think two to three years ago
the lack of content was a really valid and meaningful reason for you to
have issues growing a platform, but at this point I think we’re past that.
It’s like you’re not fighting content, you’re fighting momentum and shift
change in behavior. It’s just hard.

Ian: Yeah.

Robi: Alright, so I think we’ve covered several topics on this. The verdict
remains to be seen. We’re a little skeptical about some of the
opportunities here. But, certainly it’s nice to see Amazon broadening their
approach to apps and the Appstore. I think that as a marketer, ultimately
you want to be seeing a bigger market with consumers spending more time and
more dollars. Amazon’s clearly bringing a lot of heft from consumer
purchasing behavior. So, if you have an Amazon app, maybe it’s time to
extend it a little bit and see if HTML5 can help you do cross promotion,
and if you don’t then let’s watch and see what happens.

So, be sure to check out the other segments this week and like this video
on YouTube, share it. Thanks.