Amazon.com’s curated Android Appstore has been some time in the making – it opened to developers a few months ago, and we’re assured it will be seeing a public launch “very soon.” In the meantime, Amazon.com has obviously been wining and dining the app royalty of this world, and as a result has scored a pretty hefty coup – an Android exclusive of the newest instalment of the mind-bogglingly successful Angry Birds.
The ad-supported version of the ubiquitous avian-flinger has notched up a tidy 30 million downloads on the Android Market, and we’re sure the retail giant will be hoping to see similarly ridiculous numbers on its own Amazon.com Appstore (see how it got round Apple Inc.’s App Store trademark by removing the space? Clever).
Amazon’s Appstore will be taking more than a few leaves out of Apple’s book, offering a curated, malware-free walled garden where it can peddle its wares, with certain strings attached. Amazon is most likely hoping to fill the low-end of the market, where devices lacking the “Google Experience” languish, devoid of any kind of app store.
The new instalment in the Angry Birds saga, Angry Birds Rio, is also a movie tie-in with the upcoming animated caper from Twentieth Century Fox. Along with the sales of Angry Birds on iOS (where the game retails for $1), the ridiculous ad revenues from the Android version, and now a movie tie-in, it’s pretty safe to say Rovio, the Finnish company behind the game, are making some pretty hefty profits right now. Will that phenomenal success rub off on Amazon.com and their newest retail outlet? Only time will tell, but only a fool would bet against those Angry Birds right now.
