It seems to me that the goal of selling smartphones is no longer to profit from the sale of hardware, but to put your own services and content stores in front of the user. We've been seeing this in the PC industry for a couple decades now, with moderate push back from Microsoft.

It seems this is where most hardware is headed. Companies just want to get people integrated into their ecosystems as quickly and easily as possible. They don't really care to make money off the hardware itself. Also, the cost of manufacturing many of these devices is practically negligible at this point.

The Google Play Store is a nightmare for smaller developers. Unlike every other app platform I can think of (including Amazon's) which just send you nice tidy royalty payments, Google expects you to handle the sales tax for each and every customer, everywhere in the world.

And yet virtually nobody talks about this. I'm quite certain that any developer without an accountant is either getting it wrong or ignoring it completely. This is the reason that if I release a game for Android, it will only be through Amazon.

Are you sure about this? My reading of this document is that they do collect and process taxes in most jurisdictions:

https://support.google.com/googleplay/android-developer/answ...

Or monetize it via ads.

Still, Amazon Instant Video seems like a no-brainer. Get that on Google Play, stat! Please...