Android Market isn’t the only place you can get Android apps: 5 Alternatives to look for

Android Market isn’t the only place you can get Android apps: 5 Alternatives to look for

Android Market, now known as Google Play, is not the only way you can get apps for your Android devices. Being an open source platform, you can download apps and games for Android from several sources on the web. Google allows any third party app on its mobile operating system, which is licensed by the company for any third party product developer. So apart from Google Play, we have multiple other options to get Android apps on the web. Here we talk about five such Google Play alternatives.

 
Amazon App Store
Needless to say, Amazon App Store is one of the most prominent platforms for Android apps after Google Play. Amazon opened its app store for Android in March 2011. The U.S-only app store currently lists around 3,800 apps including free and paid offerings. Amazon’s path-breaking low-cost tablet Kindle Fire only supports Amazon App Store for applications instead of Google’s official app store. Amazon App Store features a “free app a day” feature, which offers a free app or game to users daily. On the release day, this app was “Angry Birds Rio” and when this article was being written it was “Fruit Sorter Extreme.” As noted above, Amazon App Store is presently available in the U.S only. The company hopes to launch the service across the world, however.

GetJar
GetJar is yet another leading platform where you can find your favorite Android apps. In fact, GetJar is an independent mobile phone app store that touts over than 350,000 apps for a variety of platforms like Java ME, Symbian, BlackBerry and Windows Phone besides Android. The app store was opened in 2004 by Ilja Laurs and the Silicon Valley headquartered GetJar has offices in Vilnius, Lithuania, California and San Mateo. Millions of mobile users across the world depend on the service to find their favorite apps for Android and other devices. It is easy to search and find apps on the platform and for more information about apps you can visit: Gizmowatch.com.

Opera Mobile Store (Handster)
Opera Software in September 2011 acquired Handster, an Illinois-based independent Android content library. Along with Handster.com, Opera’s new Mobile Store is now a leading content platform for Android devices. Opened in March 2011, Opera Mobile has been a notable mobile app store on the web. Opera Mobile Store has been serving users with all mobile platforms including iOS, BlackBerry and Symbian apart from Android. As of now, supported by Handster, Opera Mobile is one of the commonly used mobile application stores on the web. The platform features a huge variety of free and paid apps for multiple platforms.

SlideME
Unlike the ordinary app stores, SlideME is just an ‘on-device’ content platform for device vendors, developers and other niche markets. Apart from the common mobile users, the Seattle, Washington-based app store aims at various specialized markets based on geographic location, types of apps and payment methods. That is why different from the traditional channels, SlideME is open to developers, who can deliver and sell their products in world market. However, SlideME is a key alternative to Google Play powering more than 120 OEMs preloaded with the SlideME Market. SlideME LLC was established in 2008.

AppBrain
AppBrain is yet another prominent Android app store on web. The site provides apps for various Android-based gadgets. It features the option to search, find and install your favorite apps. Users can simply install apps to their handsets from AppBrain. A native app store client is the way you can access the site from your Android devices. In order to help mobile users easily discover the best apps, AppBrain comes with a set of special features like the Hot apps of the day, App Search, Related apps, Personalized recommendations and Top Apps by country and demographic and others factors.

There are many more platforms you can depend for Android apps. Even though, Google Play, the revamped version of Android Market, is the best service that provides the latest and fresh apps for Androids. But due to some developer restrictions or weakness of hardware, many users will have to rely on Google Play alternatives to get Android apps. Take the example of Kindle Fire. The highly popular tablet PC from Amazon doesn’t support Google Play and so users of the gadget will have to find their apps from other options including the Amazon App Store.

Contributed by:

 About the author: Alia Haley is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology, health and parenting. Beside this she is fond of games, gadgets and expensive items. These days she is busy in writing articles on her site styleguru.