Amazon has announced that they will be opening their appstore to the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain this summer, with a "global" expansion planned to follow. There's no firm date as of yet, but they have changed the developer agreement and are already accepting submissions for apps to be distributed in the listed countries, so it can't be too far off.
This is a pretty big deal, both for customers and developers. End users get access to more content for their devices, and the folks who write the apps have a broader customer base to solicit. It's good for business, and for many, Android apps are their business.
Hopefully Amazon will start offering more of their services on both sides of the pond, and other companies (hello, Google!) can work out the issues and follow suit.
Source: Amazon
Reader comments
Amazon expanding its Android appstore to Europe, developer portal updated and accepting apps now
This is going to very challenging I think, at first I think. All I can say is bring it. We're up for the challenge. Amazon Appstore Rocks!
I'm happy for those in the territories named in the article that will finally get the Amazon App Store. As someone who downloaded and installed it on my device the day the store launched, the Amazon App Store sucks, in my opinion. It started out okay and the first couple months or so, they had some AAA apps and games for free. But after awhile, their store just got littered with a lot of junk and while app stores generally have filler, Amazon's has become a wasteland of subpar junk as of the past few months (maybe around Nov or Dec '11 is when it started going downhill to me). And just about everything in the Amazon App Store is in the Google Play Store. Personally, I like the Play Store waaaayyyy better. To each their own.