Amazon Appstore launches in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain ahead of possible tablet launch
Preempting what will almost certainly see the launch of the company's Kindle Fire tablet range in Europe, Amazon has pushed like its Android Appstore in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain.
Context & Ripple Effects
Amazon has spent a year building toward this: after reports of a UK Kindle Fire launch circulated in late 2011, the company brought the Kindle Touch to Europe in March 2012 with no Fire announcement, leaving its tablet ambitions on the continent conspicuously unfinished. The Appstore rollout across the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain closes the gap that mattered most — a storefront for Android apps, which [[a:1193425|commentators argued back in November 2011 was central to Amazon's plan to take over Android app distribution]].
The timing is deliberate: Amazon has confirmed the original Kindle Fire is sold out and pulled from sale, and has scheduled a September 6 press event in Santa Monica where a refreshed tablet is expected, with rumors pointing to 7- and 10-inch models. The pickup was broad — CNET, ZDNet, Mashable, GeekWire and others all carried the story within a day — reflecting how widely the move reads as groundwork rather than an end in itself.
First-order effects
- Android developers in the five new markets gain a second major storefront overnight, with Amazon's curated, test-gated submission process now applying to European listings alongside Google Play.
- European consumers can buy Amazon apps and content locally for the first time, removing the last practical barrier to using a Kindle Fire-class device in those countries.
Second-order effects
- Google Play now faces a competitor that treats apps as a merchandising layer for commerce and media subscriptions rather than a standalone business, forcing pricing and curation comparisons in markets where Play previously went unchallenged by a first-party store.
- If the rumored European Kindle Fire launch follows, local media and retail partners — the kind Amazon bundles into Prime-style offerings — become acquisition targets for exclusive content deals, as the NBCUniversal licensing expansion in the US hinted at.
Third-order effects
- The pattern — seed the software storefront before shipping the hardware — points to Amazon internationalizing its sell-devices-cheap-monetize-content model market by market, with each country launch gated on catalog readiness rather than device availability.
The trend: Amazon is sequencing content infrastructure ahead of hardware in each new geography, turning app stores into the beachhead for tablet expansion.