Amazon's Android App Store Launches - Apple Threatens To Sue

Posted 03/22/2011 at 1:19pm | by Justin Kerr

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We all knew Android was an open platform, but few announcements remind us of this fact more clearly than the emergence of a competing Appstore which seeks to take on Google at its own game.  The long anticipated Amazon Appstore officially launches today with more than 3,800 new apps to choose from, all of which have been carefully vetted and verified by Amazon prior to posting.

Starting tonight, the Appstore will be accessible online at amazon.com/appstore , and is said to be compatible with hundreds of mobile operators and hardware devices right out of the gate. 

Some might see Amazon’s entrance into the App distribution game as an odd move, but when you consider their rapidly expanding catalog of digitally distributed content, it starts to make much more sense. It’s not hard to imagine a future where Amazon can offer apps, music, video, and books all from a single unified marketplace. And when you tie these services together with the power of 1-click buy, it’s hard to deny they might actually have a pretty bright future ahead of them in mobile.

Of course the real question is how will Google respond to all this? The company has always been upfront on its intention’s for Android, which if you take them at face value, is simply to improve mobile tie in with Google services. If this is still true today, isn’t the marketplace an important part of this? Certainly if Amazon manages to overtake Google’s app marketplace in terms of popularity, it will not only validate Apple’s approval approach, but it will cut off a very lucrative revenue stream for the platform.

Either way it’s interesting to see these closed ecosystem’s emerging within an open platform, and Sony is next to the plate with its Playstation branded store on the upcoming Xperia Play. Do you think this trend will end up benefiting or hurting Android in the long run? We’ll also have to wait and see if Apple will let them get away with keeping the name “Appstore”.

Let us know what you think in the comments below.