Amazon upscales its Appstore

Amazon this week expanded its Android-based Appstore. Previously the appstore was only available in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Japan. Now it added nearly 200 countries to the list. The storefronts will be coming in the next few months, when Amazon will officially launch its Appstore for Android internationally.

Mike George, vice president of Apps and Games at the ecommerce giant, says Amazon’s platform is a ‘complete end-to-end solution for developers wanting to build, market and monetize their apps and games on Kindle Fire and Android devices’.

Amazon, once started as an online bookseller but nowadays is much more than that, is known for entering markets quite agressive with low pricing and an omnipresence. Now, by expanding their Appstore for Android to nearly 200 countries they make an natural and essential step towards even more growth internationally.

But could there be more? Well, maybe. Rumor is that Amazon wants to gain more ground in the hardware sector. They already sell Kindle e-readers and Kindle Fire tablets, but who says there won’t be a Kindle smartphone? With an Appstore in 200 countries they at least have a good starting point…