Ahead Of Kindle Fire And Fire HD Shipments, Amazon’s Appstore Opens In Japan

Following last month’s announcement which saw Amazon opening up its Mobile App Distribution Portal to developers in Japan, the company is today announcing its Amazon Appstore is now officially open for business in that country. At the time of the original announcement, software companies including Yahoo Japan, TinyCo, Square Enix, Halfbrick, G5 Entertainment, The Weather Channel Companies and ZeptoLab, had already signaled their intentions to release on Amazon’s platform.

Today, some of those companies as well as other new ones are making their apps available to the Japanese market though Amazon’s store. Amazon’s press release, for example, includes comments from Design Inc. (“Drawing Pad” maker), TuneIn, Difference Games LLC, SoundHound, SEGA Networks, TOMY Company, Ltd., and TinyCo (Tiny Monsters, Tiny Village). It also specifically touts a few flagship applications like “Mushroom Garden,” “Yahoo! Headline,” “Fruit Ninja” and “Cut the Rope,” as well apps from Square Enix and NTT Docomo. However, not all of these apps are in the store as of today’s launch, it seems – TuneIn says it will be out next month, for instance.

Like its U.S. counterpart, the Japanese store will offer typical Amazon features like Customer Reviews, personalized recommendations, 1-Click payments, and the Free App of the Day, which offers a paid application for free to Appstore users. Apps can be installed to Android smartphones and tablets, including Amazon’s own Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD, which are now available for pre-order on Amazon’s Japanese shopping portal. Amazon has been busy expanding into Asia as of late, having announced in October pre-orders from the Kindle, Paperwhite and the expansion of the Kindle Store into Japan, alongside the Kindle Fire and Fire HD, the latter two which go on sale on December 19th. Cloud Drive also went live in Japan earlier this month.

Amazon first opened its Appstore to international applications back in June, adding support for the U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain at the time.