Thursday, May 19, 2011

Amazon Appstore Now Works On Some AT&T Android Phones

The big push by Amazon.com into the Android application marketplace area appears to have helped change AT&T's policy of not allowing "sideloading" of applications into its Android phones. AT&T is allowing users of the Samsung Infuse Android phone to "sideload" applications--something required by Amazon's recent launch of its Appstore for Android phones. According to AT&T, it will begin rolling out similar sideloading support to existing devices which it can update in the field. Until recently, users of AT&T Android devices could not load apps which were not downloaded directly from the Android Marketplace. Amazon launched its App Store in March, dangling such incentives as a free version of Angry Birds and daily, free titles to get users to try out the service. Unfortunately for AT&T users, however, they found they were unable to download even Amazon's own App Store application.