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Amazon Building Its Own Android App Market?
Thinkcloud writes "Speculation abounds that Amazon is planning their own storefront for selling Android apps, one in which they, not the developers, will set the price and decide which apps to feature (and which apps to exclude from the store all together). It's a shrewd move and smart strategy for Amazon, though its impact on app sellers is less certain."
> Just what Android needs, more fragmentation.
Yes. Because another STORE represents "fragmentation".
I can't believe anyone modded you as insightful. You're retarded. Another store just means another source of stuff to buy.
It's like the Cydia store but you don't have to hack your device first.
Yeah. That's what Frys, Best Buy, CompUSA, Tiger Direct, MicroCenter, NewEgg, Target and Walmart mean.... "fragmentation".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The issue here is not just that Amazon might want its own app store, a reasonable desire. The issue is that the current Android market really sucks. Google does not have good expertise in the curation methods that an appstore needs; right now, you have two options browsing the appstore: you can look at top, all-time sales. Games that have been out for two years top these charts, not surprisingly.
Or, you can look at the raw feed of 'newest'. In games, that would be 64 underwear puzzle games, three things in Japanese, and a tech demo of rotating lines, controlled by some sensor or other.
Google's traditional approach to this sort of problem is search, but search does not work well here, and there's significant market opportunity. Hence, Amazon.
Just what Android needs, more fragmentation.
Yea its terrible ... like having more than one shop in a mall or something
I live in a country where Android phones are either hideously overpriced ($600 for a Galaxy S? Tigger please.) or bundled with a service plan offering more voice minutes in a month than I'll use in a year. So I'm in the market for an Android PDA or Android PMP like those made by Archos, not another phone with another phone bill. An Apple fan might describe it as "Android pod touch". But I'm not aware of one Android device without a cellular radio that Google has officially approved for use with its store. So developers who don't feel like competing with established apps on Google's store can target Android devices that lack 3G and sell on AppsLib and this Amazon store in addition to Google's store.