Fragmentation. Curation. Recommendations. Take your pick: Android is getting all three, compliments of a new Amazon-run application marketplace due to launch later this year. Today, Amazon has launched the developer-facing part of the store, inviting devs to submit their applications so that they’re ready when the app store is ready for its consumer debut later this year (Amazon isn’t giving a firm date on the full launch). The developer portal is at http://developer.amazon.com.We reported on this impending news back in September, so it isn’t a huge surprise. But it’s going to bring some very interesting dynamics to the way Android applications are purchased and distributed. In some senses, this is the Android equivalent of Apple’s App Store — even more so than Google’s official Android Market.
I spoke with Aaron Rubenson, category leader for Amazon Mobile Services, and Ameesh Paleja, general manager for the Engineering Division of Mobile Services, about the new store, and it clearly has the potential to be a big deal.
First, some background for those who don’t follow Android too closely. All Google-endorsed Android devices ship with the Android Market, along with a suite of other Google-made applications like Gmail. Android Market is a lot like Apple’s App Store with a few key differences: it doesn’t have an approval system, so developers can quickly submit and iterate on their applications. It also tends to have a lot of junky applications that Apple would reject — things that crash on launch on certain devices, or apps with that occasionally have features that don’t work as expected. While Google’s terms do require descriptions to be accurate, the general attitude is to let the market decide what works, and it surfaces the top rated applications (most of the time) while letting the junk sink.
Parole Fatti Pensieri
