Eight Easy Steps

Justin Williams on the process of installing the Amazon Appstore on your Android device:

There should never be an eight step installation process in mobile computing. Unless Amazon is able to net a killer, exclusive application that’s unavailable anywhere else, I am hard-pressed to find any logic or reason why this will succeed.

I think this is Amazon’s first step towards launching their own Amazon-branded (or perhaps Kindle-branded) Android devices, where the Amazon Appstore will be preinstalled, and the devices will ship from Amazon with your Amazon credentials already set up on the device (as with the Kindle hardware today). They’re launching now, for existing Android devices, to work out the kinks and build the library of available titles.

Even with the arduous installation process for existing Android devices, I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon’s store soon surpasses Google’s Android Market. Amazon knows how to sell digital content; Google doesn’t.

★ Tuesday, 22 March 2011