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The Wall Street Journal is reporting, just as we all figured after a leaked distribution agreement, that Amazon is indeed launching their own Android app store, and it could be coming much sooner than expected. As soon as the end of the month, that is, according to sources talking to All Things Digital. Amazon is currently putting in the final work for the app store and drumming up developer support, even with a ruleset in place that requires certain exclusivity when releasing an app for the new marketplace.
Certain hurdles are in place that would prevent older apps from simply being ported over to the new market and sold. Apps couldn’t be sold at a lower price on other markets and wouldn’t qualify if they had been released for an extended period of time on another distribution platform. How this will work in light of the long-standing Apple App Store and Android Market is yet to be seen. Google is known to be making some major tweaks, if not a full overhaul, to the Android Market concurrent with the release of the next iteration of the OS, so time will tell how Amazon’s take fares.
[via All Things Digital]
This just seems like an odd choice for me. The Marketplace already exists on every Android phone… why do we need to go through Amazon to buy apps? I don’t really see the advantage to this except where it might allow some developers in countries where Google Checkout doesn’t work to sell their apps that way?
Why? Because Amazon sees $$$.
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I don’t remember what Amazon will take, but Google and Apple takes a 30% cut of every app.
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Take a popular app like Angry Birds that gets five million downloads times a few dollars per download. That’s serious money from just one popular app, for developing and setting up an app store on their already scalable platform.
Maybe amazon and google will combine their markets after a while?
BOYCOTT AMAZON
One question is, when I change to another Android phone, will my paid apps bought from Amazon be able to be transferred to my new phone? Or would I have to pay for the app all over again? Until that is certain, I would certainly buy from Market whenever possible.
I read that Amazon will also be taking 30%. This will also be the same with Verizon when they launch their app store for the android.
I highly doubt we will see a Google/Amazon merger of applications in one store. All these companies are looking at opening up their own versions of app stores because they see the revenue that Google is generating now.
I would imagine that the Amazon app store will be linked to your Amazon ID the same as Google is linked with theirs. I think it will be up to Amazon as to whether or not you would be able to transfer these apps to a replacement or new device.
I honestly don’t care that we are seeing apps being brought to us by different app stores. I think we may see competitive market where app prices are cheaper because one company is willing to subsidize some of the costs to developers in order to attract users to their store. I most likely will stick to the Google market as I have never had a problem and having apps spread out from multiple vendors doesn’t appeal to me.
Must be an Android Kindle coming… that must be good for everyone…
The built in market is deficient in a lot of ways so some real competition is a good thing. A couple of weeks after I hear about the Amazon market we now have paid apps in dozens of extra countries and talk of Paypal integration.
Coincidence?
This would solve all the problems:
1) paid apps for all countries
2) quality control: no more ‘hello world’ apps and copyright violations
3) amazon actually knows a thing or 2 about billing
Amazon really knows how to do good business and tap the markets the potential. Go Android!