A week ago we got the first reports that the Amazon Appstore – previously a U.S-only service – will soon be arriving over here in the U.K and neighbouring countries in Europe.
These were purely rumours, but backed the news that we may also shortly be receiving the multimedia flavoured Kindle Fire – or more specifically the Kindle Fire 2. Amazon has now confirmed that at least one part of this news is true and the Appstore is making the trip overseas this summer.
The Amazon Appstore is an Android-focused online software shop, akin to Google Play, that offers unique apps for all kinds of gadgets running the popular operating system – a version of which, originating from Android 2.3 Gingerbread, appears on Amazon’s own Kindle Fire tablet and a number of apps on the Appstore are hosted exclusively for the tablet platform.
Like the Appstore itself, the 7-inch full colour Kindle Fire has been absent from the U.K and European markets but rumour suggests Amazon will skip sending over the original Kindle Fire and move straight to a future revision, the Kindle Fire 2, which is thought to surface towards the end of the year. The arrival of the Amazon Appstore would certainly support that theory.
VP for Amazon’s Appstore Jim Adkins says “We’re excited to open the door to even more opportunity by expanding app sales outside the U.S. We see tremendous potential for current developers in our distribution program to grow with the international expansion. We also encourage new developers to join and participate in the platform’s growth”
A unique feature about the Appstore is that it offers a “test drive” of some of it’s new and popular apps and games, and these demos are browser-based slimmed down versions of their full fat versions which run at a faithful quality without the need to download a heavyweight file which might then not be entirely up our street.
There’s currently no further indication of when the Amazon Appstore will go live here except for the tentative ‘summer’ estimation, but Gadget Helpline will be watching out for it.
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