While perusing my feed items on the morning of February 20, 2025, I stopped to read an article by Brad Linder of Liliputing titled Amazon is killing the Appstore for Android in August, ending support for installed apps. This story is not directly relevant to me, but I was interested enough to open the article instead of marking it as “read.” As I opened the article, I thought to myself:

Amazon Appstore is available for regular Android?

I have some limited prior experience with the Amazon Appstore, but not on stock Android. My first encounter with it came on my old 7-inch Kindle Fire HDX (released on 2013), and a legacy Amazon Appstore purchase on that device yielded my first New Leaf Journal visual novel review (covering Bad End). My old BlackBerry Classic, which was my daily driver phone for several years through March or April of 2021 (I have featured many BB Classic camera photos on site) had Amazon Appstore pre-installed, and I recall having installed the Kindle app and a couple of free notes apps on my last QWERTY phone.

My Kindle Fire HDX and BlackBerry Classic were, on the surface, very different devices – but they had one key point in common. They could run some Android apps. The Kindle Fire ran Amazon’s Fire OS, which still powers the Kindle Fire line of tablets. Fire OS is based on Android but comes with a locked down UI (the HDX line was a little more configurable than modern Fire tablets) and no Google Play Store or Services. I believe my HDX was based on the Android 4.something. My BlackBerry Classic was powered by the now-dead BlackBerry 10 (it was one of the last two BlackBerry 10 devices) and BlackBerry 10 could run Android apps requiring version 4.1 or lower. Like Fire OS devices, BlackBerry 10-powered phones and tablets did not have Google Play Services or Google Play Store. When I began to understand the devices better, I took advantage of their being based on Android by installing the free and open source F-Droid app repository to outfit them with new apps. In the case of my BlackBerry Classic, I wrote about successfully using the Open Camera App and KDE Connect from F-Droid in separate articles.

Based on my experience with the Amazon App Store and cursory knowledge of Fire OS, my understanding was that it is effectively a proprietary Amazon-controlled alternative to the Google Play Store for devices such as the Kindle Fire tablets or legacy BlackBerry 10 devices that are (1) based on Android or compatible with some Android apps and (2) do not use Google Play Services. For that reason, it never occurred to me that it was available for normal (for lack of a better term) Android devices which almost always come with Google Play Services and Google Play Store installed as system apps. Another reason I would have never contemplated Amazon App Store being available is because, insofar as I understand, the vast majority of Amazon Store apps are available on Google Play Store, which in turn has a much larger (mild understatement) selection than the Amazon Store.

There is of course another reason I was unaware that the Amazon App Store is available on regular Android devices. Since moving on from my BlackBerry Classic in early 2021, I have run as my daily driver phone:

In each case, I have relied almost exclusively on free and open source apps available on F-Droid. I have never used the Google Play Store directly, much less the Amazon Store. I suppose it makes sense that the Amazon Store did work for Android since it was designed first and foremost for devices running an Android-derived operating system, but I never had a reason to think about it.

Returning to Mr. Linder’s article, I was even more surprised when I learned, and I quote from his report, that “the [Amazon] Appstore actually predates the Amazon Fire ecosystem” by several months – the Amazon Appstore was released in 2011 and the first Fire device was released later that year. I wondered, however, why people on stock Android would use the Amazon Appstore. Mr. Linder answered that question too:

That’s a bummer because while the Appstore has always been a second-rate alternative to the Google Play Store, it has also provided a way to keep your purchases synchronized between devices if you have an Amazon Fire tablet and an Android phone … With Amazon offering the same Appstore for Fire OS and Android, it offered users the ability to pay for an app or game on a Fire tablet and install the same app on an Android device without having to pay to purchase it again from the Google Play Store.

I suppose that makes sense. I also learned about a different use-case for the Amazon Appstore on Android from Hacker News. Commenter mattmaroon wrote humorously that “[a]ll 6 people who used Amazon app store on an non-Fire tablet must be very upset!” One of the 6 people, commenter bambax, replied with his or her use-case:

I’m one of them. DJI “pro” remotes are Android devices that for some reason are completely un-googled but can run the Amazon app store; if you want to run, say, Litchy on such a device (an alternative to DJI Fly app), Amazon is (was) the only option.

This struck me as an interesting scenario. Commenter bambax has an Android device that is un-Googled. I had never heard of a DJI “pro” remote, but it appears to be for controlling drones and, according to commenter bambax, runs Android but does not have Google Play Services (which is a prerequisite for the Google Play Store). His or her device could run the Amazon Appstore – which makes sense because the store works (soon to be worked) on Android without Google Play Services. Moreover, because the Amazon Appstore is made for devices that do not have Google Play Services, it follows that none of its apps depend on Google Play Services. Commenter bambax noted that it was possible to side-load the app he or she wanted to use without installing it from the Amazon App Store, “but then maps don’t work…” which is a significant problem since “the main function of the app is to program drone missions on a map…”

For people who have been using the Amazon Appstore on Android, they will be able to continue accessing their Amazon apps from Amazon Fire devices, where the Amazon Appstore will continue to work and be the default app store until Amazon decides otherwise.

I will take this opportunity to offer a PSA for people using Amazon Fire tablets. There are many articles and guides out there about fragile work-arounds to install Google Play Services and Google Play Store on Amazon Fire devices. However, for those of you with Fire devices who would like some free and open source apps – F-Droid can be easily side-loaded and used as an app store on Fire OS devices, and the new Fire devices support a much wider selection of apps on F-Droid than did my old HDX 7 (I wrote about using F-Droid on my Fire HDX in the 26th edition of The Newsletter Leaf Journal). I personally recommend installing F-Droid Basic and browsing its great selection of free and open source apps to try on your Fire Tablet (you can see some good app ideas in my somewhat outdated list of 2023 default apps and 2021 list of recommended F-Droid apps). For people on stock Android who do not want to use F-Droid for one reason or another, it alternatively serves as a good way to search for interesting open source Android apps, many of which are also available on the Google Play Store.

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