Even as Cupertino giant Apple has sued Amazon over the name ‘Appstore,’ Amazon’s Appstore for Android has gone live in the US. Amazon’s application store for Android powered devices has been long awaited and is being considered one of the major players in the apps market already, even though it has gone live with about 3,800 apps. The user can download the Amazon Appstore app onto their phones or buy apps from Amazon’s website (which allows users to test apps -‘Test Drive’ – before buying). One of the first apps on the store is the immensely popular Angry Birds Rio available for download for free for a day. Likewise, each day will see a paid application being made available for free download.
Considering that thousands of people make purchases from Amazon each day as a habit, its Appstore is likely to get off to a rousing start. At this point, Amazon is free to price the apps at their will, which means the same app could cost less or more on its Appstore than on Google’s Android Marketplace. And Amazon might well use the price card to attract traffic and users initially.
We are hoping that the Amazon Android Appstore goes live in India soon – there are thousands of Android users out here waiting for an alternative to Android Marketplace. Including us, of course.
