Online retail giant Amazon.com extended software development for its Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform to the iOS and Android mobile operating systems, introducing SDKs giving developers access to the storage, database and messaging facilities. According to Amazon, the mobile SDKs make it easier for software developers to call an AWS web service API directly from a mobile app--in the past, developers either wrote their own libraries to facilitate the HTTP connection, request retries and error handling, or else incorporated additional infrastructure to proxy the API requests via server fleet.
Both the AWS SDK for Android and the AWS SDK for iOS include libraries, full documentation and some sample code. Some suggested AWS-enabled applications, per Amazon: Media applications that upload photos, videos and related content to the Amazon S3 storage service for world-wide distribution through Amazon CloudFront; social games that share moves, high scores and other data between devices via the Amazon SimpleDB database; and messaging clients that broadcast messages between devices using the Amazon Simple Queue Service and Amazon Simple Notifications Service, with no additional server infrastructure required.
Amazon is still expected to roll out its own branded Android app store sometime in the near future. Multiple reports indicate the storefront will offer both premium and free Android applications, awarding developers either 70 percent of the purchase price or "20 percent of the list price as of the purchase date," a stipulation presumably in place to dissuade developers from selling their software at a discount via competing stores. In addition, all applications will integrate DRM features to ensure they run solely on Amazon-approved devices.
For more:
- read this Amazon Web Services Blog entry
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