Amazon claims over 200,000 apps on its Android Appstore

On Thursday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in a letter to its investors announced that Amazon Appstore now has over 200,000 apps and serves customers in almost 200 countries.

The Amazon Appstore was launched in March 2011 with 3,800 apps. Last year in August, Amazon reported that its Appstore had grown to 100,000 apps. Now the company has doubled the number of apps in less than a year, but it is still notably very less than over one million apps on Google's Play store and Apple's App Store.

"I'm so proud of what all the teams here at Amazon have accomplished on behalf of customers this past year. Amazonians around the world are polishing products and services to a degree that is beyond what's expected or required," wrote CEO Jeff Bezos.

Amazon's Appstore provides an app store for Android users, as an alternate to Google's Play Store. The store made its name by offering a paid app for free every day.

The Amazon CEO also provided an update on other offerings Amazon launched during the year, saying, "We introduced Amazon Coins, a virtual currency that saves customers up to 10% on app and in-app purchases. Our Whispersync for Games technology lets you start a game on one device and continue it on another without losing your progress."

He also shared updates on some initiatives targetting app developers, adding, "Developers can use the Mobile Associates program to offer millions of physical products from Amazon inside their apps, and earn referral fees when customers buy those items. We introduced Appstore Developer Select, a marketing program that promotes new apps and games on Kindle Fire tablets and on Amazon's Mobile Ad Network."

The letter addressing Amazon shareholders also covered other services from Amazon, like Prime, Prime Instant Video, Fire TV, Amazon Web Services, and many others.

Bezos said Amazon added more than one million customers to Prime in the third week of December alone, and there are now "tens of millions" of Prime members worldwide. At the launch of Prime the company had one million products eligible for Prime, and this year it surpassed 20 million eligible products.