Amazon's Appstore reaches new 50,000 app milestone

As if Amazon needed something else to brag about after unleashing an exciting new line of Kindle products, the ecommerce company has reached a new milestone to cross off the list.

According to Tech Hog, Amazon has passed 50,000 apps on its Android-based Appstore after 18 months of business. Amazon’s been building an ecosystem using cloud storage, Amazon Prime, and online bookstore to further develop content around its Kindle brand of tablets and e-readers.

It may not be comparable to Google’s 600,000 app collection, but this new benchmark will be a great selling feature, as the company winds down from the conference today. Especially since Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, placed such a huge emphasis on the Kindle hardware as a service, not a gadget.

“Kindle Fire is a service. What does it mean for a hardware device to be a service? It greets you by name. It has the lowest prices on content, it keeps your place for you, it keeps all of your content in the Amazon cloud, backed up, worry-free,” he said near the beginning of the event.

It doesn’t hurt that the hardware announced today is pretty impressive with an aggressively low pricepoint and addresses quite a few shortcomings from the previous versions. Mad about the Kindle’s lack of built-in light? Try the Kindle Paperwhite starting at $119 (and ignore the silly name). Or maybe you want a Kindle Fire with a bigger screen? Take a look at the new Kindle Fire HD available in two sizes, a 7-inch version for $199 and an 8.9-inch version for $299 (Wi-Fi) or $499 (4G LTE).

The prices are absurdly low for the high-end specs you’re getting – Amazon basically admitted to making no profit on hardware. But Amazon seems happy to make its profit off of the content offered and why stop now?

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