Amazon Builds Out Mobile Development Services

Amazon Web Services announced a new Simple Notification Service for Apple, Google, and its own Fire devices that allows developers to send notifications to all of these platforms via one, unified API. The new service is free for up to one million notifications per month, and then $0.50 per each additional million messages published. This move comes on the back of analysis that reveals that users want to be updated about things that they care about, even when they’re not in the app itself. Indeed, Microsoft is pushing Windows Azure as a platform for mobile services, including push alerts, so expect to see more news around development push notifications in the coming months.

Twilio Partners With Google Cloud

Twilio, arguably the largest voice and messaging API available to developers, today announced its partnership with Google’s Cloud Platform. For the first time, a voice and messaging API solution is integrated with the Google App Engine, which allows developers to integrate voice and messaging services into their web and mobile apps, advertising, or marketing plans with just a few lines of code. Google hopes that this merger will attract developers to their platform instead of competitors like Microsoft’s Azure or Amazon Web Services – with which Twilio was already integrated. In an age when developers are on the lookout for more functionality in their apps, Google is coming to its senses regarding the type of functionality needed for success, and is adding Twilio to accomodate the developer-facing marketing that brings users, new development, and ultimately new products.