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Kindle Fire, a brand new tablet from Amazon, runs on Android operating system, but it doesn’t mean you’ll have easy access to Android Market.

Amazon wants to make sure you’ll buy as much as possible within their own ecosystem. You’ll be able to add Android apps, but those app will come from Amazon’s own Android AppStore.

There are over 17,000 apps in Amazon’s store with applications. It’s a tiny percent of a total number of apps available for Android devices. In mid-October there was more than 500,000 apps in Android Market!

However, before getting down to hacking Kindle Fire’s system, it’s good to check what’s available at Amazon.

How to browse Amazon AppStore

1. Go to Amazon’s AppStore homepage.

2. You can browse by using a search box. A list of results will display only items from the AppStore, not from all Amazon departments.

3. You can also use a left sidebar and select a category you’re interested in. There are 2,700 apps in Books & Comics section. Not that bad!

Actually I was surprised to find Kobo, Aldiko and Bluefire Reader. Get those apps for your Kindle Fire and you’ll be able to read books in epub format from many sources!

Via Ebook Friendly

2 COMMENTS

  1. Piotr,
    You’ll be maybe amused that I went to my front door this afternoon to see that the UPS/USPS shipping-combo had left a box in front, outside, with the words “Kindle Fire” on it. Just as in the commercial 🙂

    I’ve been too busy trying out all kinds of video (Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu Plus) and become hypnotized.

    In the meantime, there have been reports that Kobo and Aldiko apps are not available for the Kindle Fire — at least at the time people tried earlier today.

    But, as you know, Android apps from elsewhere (hopefully checked out first by others) can be side-loaded to the Kindle Fire, and those versions of Aldiko and Kobo do work. Amazon decided to leave the Android setting that lets us decide whether we want to install and run outside apps. (Not possible with with unrooted Nook tablets).

    The videos streamed over Comcast have been mindblowingly good, in higher resolution than I expected (looking very close to HD on all three). But that will be true only if you have fast Internet and too often DSL is quite a bit slower though they offer tiers with higher speeds.

    Basic audio (cabled to a couple of speakers I bought Alesis) is really clear and noise-free, relatively speaking. I have the little video player in front of my keyboard playing Ken Burns’ Yosemite episodes in the Nat’l Parks documentary.

    (Silk browser was very effective for me, maybe because I got my Fire late and others had trained Silk 🙂 )

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