Amazon Appstore officially launches in China

By Paul Chung

Techies will be shocked to hear that Amazon debuted its Appstore for China this week, contrary to the company's Asia-Pacific Appstore expansion plan from last month that notably excluded China.

The new Appstore features a combination of local and foreign apps. Popular app titles include WeChat, Youku, Weibo, QQ, and Angry Birds, of course!

Most importantly, the launch suggests that the launch Kindle and Kindle Fire devices in the Chinese market are imminent. Amazon Appstore, which can be synced with any Android device, will cater primarily to the firm's Kindle Fire tablet device once it is available to Chinese consumers.

The Appstore launch, however, is not the first harbinger of the impending Kindle launch. Last month, Amazon rolled out cloud services in China when it launched Amazon Cloud Drive in China. Moreover, Amazon launched its Chinese Kindle e-bookstore back in December 2012.