Amazon released their own App Store for Android early this morning, making it in some cases the third way for people to discover apps on their Android phones.
If anyone doubted that Android is not a major player in mobile up until this point, it is almost impossible to deny now that Amazon have put their significant sales might behind Android applications.
There have been some calls by users to simplify the process of getting Android applications – iOS’ one standard app store is a one-stop shop for apps, but with Amazon’s entry some Android users on US carrier Verizon now have a choice between the official Android Market, the Verizon App Store and the Amazon version. UK users are out of luck though – Amazon have a geographic restriction on the App Store which prevents all applications that I had an opportunity to test from installing. This means that anyone outside the US who was hoping to get their hands on the latest Angry Birds edition (“Rio”) will have to wait until Amazon relinquishes their exclusive distribution deal with producer Rovio, or the store becomes internationally available.
Amazon have a compelling deal for Android app makers to distribute on their platform. Their sales and online promotion abilities are legendary, and they claim to be able to market apps to “tens of millions” of users.
The Amazon site initially had a few teething problems, but everything seems to be back up and working as expected, for those in the US at least, now. We’ll be monitoring the US launch and hoping for a UK version to see how it stacks up to the iOS App Store, the standard Android Market as well as the Windows Phone Marketplace in terms of both experience and sales.
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