Amazon mobile appstore

I had an email today from Amazon inviting me to join their new Amazon Appstore for Android. The enticement was a free copy of Bejeweled 2.

The question is, why do we need another third party app store for Android, when the official Marketplace works perfectly well as it is?

My only conclusion is Amazon gearing up for a more global launch of the Kindle Fire, and generating their own App store ready to integrate it. After all, the Fire isn't compatible with the official Android Marketplace.

If that isn't the case then I see no reason to use an alternative Amazon store to obtain exactly the same Apps as the Android Marketplace. I could see Apps splitting between the 2 which could cause issues and annoyance. I can fully understand Amazon wanting to get in on the lucrative mobile market this way, but we just don't need another store when one already exists for exactly the same market and mobile OS.

Sounds a bit like trying to jump on a bandwagon, but when it has already sped off into the distance.

I may well be proved wrong, but I don't see this taking off for the phones. For the Kindles... maybe. But then a Kindle is such an ecxellent little book reader, will trying to market it as having tablets in the range just dilute this? Is more going to actually be less here?

I think the Kindle Fire will be a success purely because of it's price. $200 is half that of even the cheapest iPad or any other android based tablet, but it can do just as much in the consumer market.

Where Amazon are doing things differently is using a custom version on Android 2.2 that is not compatible with standard marketplace apps, or with standard os updates, so they control it completely, a bit like Apple.

This might sound restrictive, but for most people they want a tablet for reading webpages, the news, email, articles and colour books. Plus some streaming video and the odd film. For this the Fire will deliver.

It also ties it directly into Amazon's store, creating a sales portal for them to sell videos, audio and books as the only supplier.

The only area it might fall down is productivity, such as video or image previewing in the field, or business work, but in such professions they have money to just opt for an iPad anyway.