The Kindle Fire is live and it’s a huge success. Even before launch, it was clear that this would be a hit, an Android tablet device at this price point, coming from Amazon.

I figured this could be a nice extra channel to sell our existing Android apps.
About a month ago, as a test, we created a special build of our CLZ Movies app and submitted it to the Amazon Appstore for review. Approval took 2 weeks, but it got approved in one go. So we quickly prepared builds of our other 4 apps and submitted them too, hoping to get them all live before the launch of the Kindle Fire on November 15. We just missed that deadline, but still, on November 17 we received the OK on the other 4 as well.

After which I proudly announced to my Facebook fans that our Android apps were now available for the new Kindle Fire. Some customers had been asking about apps for Kindle Fire, so I told our support guys that they could tell them the happy news.
In the meantime, we had already sold some copies of CLZ Movies through the Amazon Appstore, so things were looking good.

But then we started receiving questions from customers, why they could only find CLZ Movies in the Amazon Appstore on their Kindle Fire device. Huh? All five had been approved so where are the other 4? The Appstore Developer Portal shows no difference in status between the apps, they’re all listed as “Live”.
Andrey Butov, a fellow mobile app developer, had similar results: His app, designed for Kindle Fire only, had been approved but was not available on the Fire, apparently because it had not been specifically approved for Kindle Fire yet.

So I submitted a quick question to Amazon Support, from the Devportal:

All my five apps have been approved, but my customers tell me that only 1 of them (CLZ Movies, the first one that was approved) is available in the Kindle Fire Appstore.
I can’t figure out why my other apps don’t show up on Kindle Fire. I heard that there is a separate approval process for the Fire? Is there anyway I can see the status of that?

Their answer:

Thanks for contacting the Amazon Appstore.
I’ve asked our content team to review your app again for Kindle Fire. Please note, however, that we are considering each app on a case-by-case basis for Kindle Fire and not currently offering all apps in the Amazon Appstore on the device. I will follow up with you once I’ve heard from the content team. Thanks for your patience.

What? Does this mean my apps are not guaranteed to be selected for Kindle Fire? What’s that about? My only reason for submitting my apps to the Amazon Android Appstore is to make them available on Kindle Fire (and I suspect that it’s the same for most developers).

And why is this so unclear? Why not just list the Kindle Fire approval status separately in the Developer Portal. I thought the Android Market Developer admin was clunky, but this is even worse. iTunesConnect suddenly doesn’t look that bad…