Amazon App store for Android is celebrating its first birthday with a week of deals on some of its customers favorite apps and games, including iconic titles such as Fruit Ninja, Wolfram Alpha, Splashtop Remote Desktop, Dr. Seuss’s The Shape of Me and Other Stuff, TuneIn Radio Pro, TETRIS, PAC-MAN, The Lost City, MONOPOLY, AccuWeather Platinum and Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals. Birthday deals started yesterday with one of the top paid apps, Plants vs. Zombies, at 67 percent off.
The official first day Amazon’s App store for Android was open for business was March 22 of last year, but it seems the retail giant wanted to get the party started a bit early.
Amazon is set to announce two more app deals. On day three, three more new app deals will be revealed and so on for the remainder of the week-long celebration. Also starting today, the Amazon Appstore kicks off its Amazon Appstore for Android Birthday Giveaway and will award a Kindle Fire to eight lucky winners who enter the sweepstakes by March 31, 2012.
“Customers have used the Amazon Appstore to test drive and buy millions of apps and games for their Kindle Fire and other Android devices in the first year alone,” said Aaron Rubenson, director of Amazon App store for Android. “To thank customers for shopping with us, we worked closely with our developers to offer special discounts on some of the most popular apps all week long.”
Customers can use Amazon’s Test Drive feature to test out apps before buying. Once they download an app they can use it across multiple devices, including Kindle Fire, giving developers a new platform for reaching customers.
When Amazon opened its Appstore for Android, much to the displeasure of rival Apple Inc., which calls its app storefront the App Store, it had 4,000 apps available for download. About a year later, there are more than 31,000 apps available, Amazon said. The Seattle based company wouldn’t say how many downloads have taken place, but did say it was in the millions.
At the end of year one, the most downloaded paid apps from Amazon are Cut the Rope, Angry Birds and Where’s My Water. The most downloaded free apps were Angry Birds Free, Netflix and MobilityWare’s Solitaire.
