HN Reader

"What happens to my apps after the discontinuation of the Amazon Appstore on Android?"

"Starting August 20, 2025, any apps downloaded from the Amazon Appstore will not be guaranteed to operate on Android devices. Amazon Appstore will continue to be available elsewhere, including on Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices. " ---------

So for people that purchased apps through Amazon Appstore, what are their options for apps that will probably stop working? If there are no options for a refund, then this is another reason not to purchase items that you never truly own.

Curious timing, what with the EU DMA opening Play Store to make it easier for people to install it.

Of course, Amazon are subject to the DMA and (I suspect) not overall a fan, so maybe it makes sense for them to not make use of the capabilities it allows?

Not a problem for me, I only took the free apps from Amazon's store. If the same app was available on Play, I bought it there. It never made sense to me to pay for an app that was not on the native appstore and while I do have a Fire tablet and multiple FireTV Cubes, I was always more vested into the non-Amazon side of Android for phones.

I didnt even know this existed.

Is amazon essentially going through a firing spree? Between rto friction and dropping stuff it looks like it wants to shed a lot of people from its payroll.

The Amazon Appstore is a steaming puddle of absolute crap for the most part. I have a Fire tablet I play some simple games on, they're all chock-full of ads. Very few mainstream apps are available, though plenty of cheap knockoffs of those apps are. If you want something good, it's easiest to grab the .apk and sideload it. There are ways to install the Play Store but they're likely beyond most of the Fire's userbase. Regular Android users won't notice or miss this nor should they.

If I needed a tablet for anything serious, I'd buy an iPad or Pixel Tablet, both of which come with a real app store.

Ah, fond memories of using it on the BraillePlus 18, an old, discontinued Android-based Braille device that, since it didn't have a screen, couldn't be Play certified. Of course this was around Android 4.

Did Amazon start a new round of cost cutting, layoffs or something? Yesterday they discontinued Chime. As if Amazon is doubling down on cutting "unnecessary" services

All 6 people who used Amazon app store on a non-Fire tablet must be very upset!

While this would negatively affect some of the apps I am using, I am overall glad Amazon is closing this. They should close all things they have done that lower the quality bar and more importantly, make sure the leaders in particular learn some hard lessons.

> Amazon Appstore will continue to be available elsewhere, including on Fire TV and Fire Tablet devices.

Funnily enough I installed this recently to install a game I bought years ago.

I tried searching for it and found several outright scam apps. I figured Amazon had given up with it.

My bet is that Amazon is working on a new OS that's not compatible with Android

This explains why Windows wsa is going away, since it was tied to this.

Stopped "purchasing" from them after i found out they wrapped their whole Store crap around apps and repackaged them.

At this rate, in a year of two, Amazon will have a reputation for killing products just like Google. It was Chime yesterday and now this.

Personally I still haven't gotten over Amazon's killing of the magazine subscription service.

But Java doesn't even have union types

Just stop giving Amazon money—at this point you can only blame yourself.

What took them so long