Amazon’s Appstore For Android Turns One: 31K Apps, Millions Sold

This morning, Amazon announced its mobile app marketplace, the Amazon Appstore for Android, is celebrating its first birthday with a week-long sale on some of its most popular apps.

The company also took the time to share some figures about the Appstore’s growth over the past year, including the size of its selection, which grew from 4,000 apps at launch to 31,000+ apps today. In addition, Amazon released lists of its best-selling apps of all time, both paid and free.

The week-long sale will offer deals on some of Amazon’s top-selling apps, including 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.

Today, Plants vs. Zombies will go on sale at 67% off. Tomorrow, two apps will go on  sale. On day three, three apps will go on sale, and so on for the remainder of the week-long event.

In conjunction with the sale, Amazon will be running a contest to give away a Kindle Fire to eight winners who enter the sweepstakes by March 31st. (More on that here).

Amazon also revealed a few facts about the Amazon Appstore’s growth, but it was notable that the company didn’t release an exact download number. Perhaps not looking forward to the Apple comparisons, where some lucky customer recently downloaded the 25 billionth iOS app, Amazon’s director of Amazon Appstore for Android, Aaron Rubenson, hedged exact figures by referring to “millions of apps and games” instead.

A few more tidbits:

• In its first year, the most downloaded paid app in the Amazon Appstore was Cut the Rope, followed by Angry Birds (Ad-Free) and Where’s My Water?; the most downloaded free app was Angry Birds Free, followed by Netflix and Solitaire by MobilityWare.
• Amazon Appstore offers a paid app for free every day. If a customer had downloaded every Free App of the Day since launch, they would have saved nearly $1,000.
• The paid app with the most 5-star reviews in the first year of the Amazon Appstore was Where’s My Water?, with over 3,000; the free app with the most 5-star reviews was Blood & Glory, with over 4,000.
• In the Amazon Appstore’s first year, customers spent more than 7.7 million minutes test driving apps; Bubble Buster was the most test-driven app, followed by Amazon MP3 for Android with Cloud Player and Memory Trainer.
• Over the past year, the most popular app category for customers is games, followed by entertainment and productivity. Some of the most popular apps include Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, QuickOffice Pro, CalenGoo and Exchange by TouchDown.

With the Appstore’s first year wrapped up, Amazon released its all-time top selling app lists, both of which show a clear bias for games over apps. Note that even on the free apps list, games dominate – something which implies most users still download their staples (think Facebook, Twitter, etc.) from the Android Market.

Top Paid Apps (over the last 12 months)

1. Cut the Rope

2. Angry Birds (Ad-Free)

3. Where’s My Water?

4. Angry Birds Rio (Ad-Free)

5. Angry Birds Seasons (Ad-Free)

6. Plants vs. Zombies (Kindle Fire Edition)

7. Fruit Ninja

8. SCRABBLE (Kindle Fire Edition)

9. UNO (Kindle Fire Edition)

10. TETRIS

Top Free Apps (over the last 12 months)

1. Angry Birds Free

2. Netflix

3. Solitaire

4. Fruit Ninja Free

5. Angry Birds Seasons Free

6. Bubble Buster

7. Little Piano Free

8. Roller Lite

9. Jewels

10. Hangman Free

The company has launched a dedicated portal where you can find all the deals, contests and more at www.amazon.com/appstorebirthday.