Some 65 per cent of developers surveyed in an Amazon-sponsored IDC poll said that Kindle Fire gave them “similar or better” total revenue to rival platforms, with 15 per cent claiming it gave results “significantly” higher than the alternatives.

However, the results were not overwhelmingly positive: the survey also “echoed” a feeling among developers that Kindle Fire requires a higher degree of investment to support, although interviewees indicated an “incremental” increase in development costs related to optimising apps to take advantage of Amazon’s APIs.

Interestingly, 76 per cent of developers said that Kindle Fire helps them connect with new customers, audiences or markets. This implies that support for the device can open new markets for developers, when new customers on competing platforms are increasingly hard to find, the analyst firm observed.

And 57 per cent of developers are “very satisfied” with the revenue generated by their Kindle Fire apps, with an additional 22 per cent “somewhat satisfied”.

Another stand-out figure is that 29 per cent of developers are creating apps for Kindle Fire “natively”, ahead of the 26 per cent porting Android apps, and 22 per cent who are using both approaches.

Across-the-board, the main priorities for developers are a large number of users, high levels of user engagement, and ease of app discovery.

Unsurprisingly, Android Phones were the most popular target device, followed by iPhone, Android tablets and iPad. And while Kindle appears to give developers positive results, it still lags Windows Phone in terms of priorities for developers.

The big concerns for Kindle Fire development were the number of Kindle Fire users (cited by 44 per cent of respondents) and its lack of established market presence (33 per cent), followed by the costs and difficulty associated with porting apps to the platform (31 per cent).

“In IDC’s view, Amazon has an opportunity to address developers’ perceptions about what costs, engagement levels, and ROI that developers targeting Kindle Fire have experienced to date, and can reasonably expect going forward,” the report said.

IDC surveyed 360 mobile developers, from a variety of different sized companies, across market sectors.