Amazon aims to be more competitive against set-top rivals such as Google's Cast and Apple's AirPlay with its new Fling software toolkit.
Fling is designed to facilitate multimedia content sharing with the Amazon Fire TV, inviting more users and developers to the party. The software toolkit enables developers to make music, videos or photos running on their FireOS, iOS or Android applications sharable with Amazon's Fire TV. More specifically, developers can now modify their existing apps that are using the Google Cast Companion Library, for instance, to support Amazon Fling as well.
While Google's Chromecast and the Apple TV have already had such sharing features built-in for a good while now, Amazon has some catching up to do. Integrating the new Amazon software development kit (SDK) with existing Chromecast apps for Android or iOS would make the whole process far easier for developers who are already using Chromecast in their apps.
"The Amazon Fling SDK is a cross-platform toolkit that enables mobile developers to build rich multi-screen experiences with Amazon Fire TV. The SDK allows sending video, audio and images from iOS, Android or Fire OS mobile apps to Amazon Fire TV," Amazon explains. "With our SDK, you can "fling" media content to Amazon Fire TV and leverage two-way communication between Amazon Fire TV and mobile apps to create engaging second screen experiences."
Amazon further points out that its new SDK now only allows for media "flinging," but also enables developers to build companion apps compatible with Fire TV.
When opening an app that supports Fling on a smartphone or tablet, users will see a new Fling icon, which allows them to cast the content to their Amazon Fire TV. If you're looking through some photos on an iPhone within an app, for instance, you can "fling" them onto the big screen so you'll see them in greater detail. To do so, simply tap the Fling icon and the Amazon Fire TV will show the content in question on the connected TV.
Amazon Fling shows great potential to compete against Google Cast and Apple TV, and it will likely draw plenty of interest because it allows developers to save money. Instead of building a new app altogether specifically for Amazon's set-top box, which would involve additional expenses, developers can simply modify their existing Android and iOS apps to support the Fire TV as well, making significant savings. If only for this reason, Amazon Fling does stand a chance against rivals.
It remains to be seen just how successful Amazon Fling will be compared with Google Cast and Apple AirPlay, but the software toolkit has great potential and makes Amazon more competitive.
