Citi launches first Kindle banking app.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

  Finance house Citi has launched what it claims to be the first banking app specifically designed for Amazon’s Kindle tablet, which it said “provides US consumers with a visually engaging, convenient way to track, analyse and plan their finances on the go.”

Tracey Weber, the company’s MD for consumer internet banking and mobile banking in North America, said: “Based on the extraordinary download rates and highly positive consumer feedback that followed our initial tablet app launch, we know how much our customers value these tools. 

 When Amazon launched Kindle Fire, we understood our customers would want a customized app that brings dynamic banking capabilities to this popular new tablet, and we worked swiftly to create one.”

The app is said to “turn traditional rows of numbers into rich graphs and visual representations of consumer accounts and transactions.”

It is available from the Amazon Appstore for Android: CITI

Kindle Fire quality content is dominating on Android tablets app usage.

WorldWide Tech & Science. Francisco De Jesús.

Analytics firm Flurry said that Amazon’s Kindle grew to represent 36 percent of end user Android tablet app sessions in January 2012 from 3 percent in November 2011, primarily at the expense of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab.

The company said that the Christmas holiday sales period resulted in a “massive surge in session usage” for the Amazon device, which actually edged the Samsung device into second place using unrounded numbers (at 35.7 percent and 35.6 percent, respectively).

While the Kindle Fire has managed to overtake the Galaxy Tab in a matter of months from a standing start, it was also noted that overall Android tablet sessions more than tripled during the period, with Galaxy Tab sessions increasing by more than 50 percent.

Based on an analysis of 5 paid apps which ranked in the top 10 for both Android Market and Amazon App Store, the company asserted that “the Kindle Fire drove over 2.5 times more paid downloads to consumers than the Samsung Galaxy Tab." This means that “Amazon App Store can already deliver more direct revenue to developers than the Android Market” – despite the smaller installed base of tablets.

In a blog post, Flurry said that “Amazon’s launch of Kindle Fire had more in common with an Apple-style launch than it did with aligning with the Android system.” By taking a content-led standpoint, Amazon is taking a contrasting approach to rival Android device makers, who have “focused on marketing the operating system and the 'power' of the devices, with quality of content and the consumer experience subordinated in priority.”