4 ms·
Too bad it's currently US only if you want to sell something :( "AWS Marketplace currently only supports Sellers with a US Subsidiary that can submit a W-9 tax
by defied 14y ago
Too bad it's currently US only if you want to sell something :(
"AWS Marketplace currently only supports Sellers with a US Subsidiary that can submit a W-9 tax form.
"
- tjic 14y ago> "AWS Marketplace currently only supports Sellers with a US Subsidiary that can submit a W-9 tax form. " Sounds like you can blame the government here, not Amazon.
- fierarul 14y agoHow does Apple manage to pay iOS developers from all the rest of the countries?
- ceejayoz 14y agoSubsidiaries in those countries, most likely.
- zerostar07 14y agoAmerican companies can perfectly well pay foreigners, in which case the foreign entity provides a W8BEN form.
- pjscott 14y agoThe fact that the red tape is not insurmountable doesn't mean that it's trivial.
- alexchamberlain 14y agoWe're not talking about a bootstrapped startup though; this is Amazon with all the legal expertise that means. They managed to evade £9 million in UK tax!
- pjscott 14y agoJust because Amazon is big doesn't mean that everything they do has to be big and full-featured right from the beginning. That's how big companies ossify.
- fierarul 14y agoI guess one could always find a justification. But the fact of the matter is that no other big US company managed to do what Apple did years ago: give money to non-US companies/individuals selling IP. Google's AppStore still supports only a limited number of countries. Amazon don't support sellers outside the US for any of their offerings (be it, selling books via Kindle Direct Publishing or selling apps in their Android store or selling EC2 images). This is not a feature that's too early to talk about because AWS Marketplace is new. Supporting non-US sellers is something that Amazon just doesn't seem to be able to do it or doesn't care. Frankly I don't know if it's a matter of red-tape (they would need a single EU presence, for example, to cater to the 27 member states) or just some kind of weird protectionism.
- samsudden 14y agoWhy? Other marketplaces (Google Apps, for example) seem to support international sellers well.
- chj 14y agocould somebody explain why Amazon has the US only issue, while apple appstore goes worldwide almost from day one?
- mbrubeck 14y agoI worked at Amazon for several years; one of my team's biggest projects during all those years was expanding certain partner programs to new international locales. I think Amazon generally prefers to launch quickly in one or two big locales, then expand geographically over time. The alternative is to delay the launch everywhere until support for every region is ready. Launching everywhere at once has its benefits (in particular it can make for better publicity), but potentially at the cost of being later to market and the opportunity cost of revenue not earned during the delay. Amazon has less focus on major PR events than Apple, so it probably weighs these costs and benefits differently.
- zevyoura 14y agoEr, did the app store actually do that? I thought there were still countries with no app store.
- ojosilva 14y agoI wonder if companies like mine could proxy/resell for you, since we have a US subsidiary in Boston that meet the criteria. We're working on rolling out our own issue management product into the AWS Marketplace and having a local US office was a lifesaver for us, for this and other distribution and billing bureaucracies (related to consulting in this case).