Amazon remains something of a conundrum for most mobile game developers.

The company is clearly very interested in gaming; something underscored by its $970 million purchase of Twitch and rumours attempts to buy middleware engines like Unity and Cocos2d.

Yet, despite solid hardware - which it has just refreshed - there's the sense that without any official sales figures from Amazon to the contrary, its ecosystem is limited to a certain cross-section of the North America market.

Still, if the case study from social casino company Playtika is anything to go by, if you have games that appeal to this demographic, you can do very well - at least on a per user basis.

Of course, social casino games are highly attuned to a North American market which has long viewed gambling as a core leisure activity.

Coming up cherries

Looking at the company's casual slots games Slotomania, Playtika's veep of business development Elad Kushnir told Amazon that during 2014, Kindle Fire players have generated 70 percent higher ARPU than Google Play players and 15 percent higher than iOS players.

Partly this is because Amazon players offer stronger retention. Kushnir said 2- and 7-day retention rates were broadly similar on all platforms, but retention on Amazon was 10-20 percent higher at 30 days.

This boils down to an increased likelihood of a player spending money in-game.

Playtika says an average Amazon player is more 150 percent likely to purchase an IAP compared to an iOS player, a rate that increases to 170 percent compared to a Google Play player.

This is all fine-and-dandy in terms of per user comparisons, but for most developers the sheer scale of Google Play and iOS is what makes them much more important to their business strategy.

And scale is the one thing Amazon isn't yet transparent about.

[source: Amazon Developer blog]