Amazon has launched an online app store for Android-based mobile phones and tablets in competition with Google's own Android Market.
Amazon's buy-once-use-anywhere approach for Android devices is sure to find favour with users who have come to expect multi-screen access to their favourite applications and content via the web, says Ovum principal analyst Tony Cripps.
Personalised recommendations and other popular Amazon features, such as 1-Click payment options for Amazon account holders, he says, will also help shake up the status quo, as will the new "test drive" facility.
"However, more critical in the longer term will be Amazon's ability to attract major brands and media organisations to its application store - something Google has to date been conspicuously less successful in doing than Apple," says Cripps.
This could prove decisive not only to Amazon's success in this space, but could also be the key to Android's ability to compete on equal terms with Apple in the minds of consumers, he says.
Unlike Google's Android Market, and like Apple's online store for iPhone apps, Amazon will test each app for security and reliability.
This innovation could prove a major draw and help make Android phones as user-friendly as iPhones, according to other analysts.
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