Amazon on Thursday announced that its mobile marketplace, the Amazon Appstore, is celebrating its first birthday. The company is kicking of its celebration with a week of deals on some of its most popular apps. “Customers have used the Amazon Appstore to test drive and buy millions of apps and games for their Kindle Fire and other Android devices in the first year alone,” said Aaron Rubenson, director of Amazon Appstore for Android. “To thank customers for shopping with us, we worked closely with our developers to offer special discounts on some of the most popular apps all week long.” Amazon’s selection of Android apps has grown nearly eight-fold since it launched last year, from 4,000 apps to over 31,000. In its first year, the most downloaded paid app was Cut the Rope, followed by Angry Birds and Where’s My Water. The most downloaded free app was Angry Birds Free Edition, followed by Netflix and Solitaire by MobilityWare. Read on for Amazon’s press release.

Amazon Appstore for Android Celebrates First Birthday with a Week of Deals on Customers’ Favorite Apps and Games

Since its launch one year ago, Amazon Appstore customers have bought millions of apps and games for Kindle Fire and other Android-based devices

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Mar. 15, 2012– Amazon Appstore for Android is celebrating its first birthday with a week of deals on some of its customers’ favorite apps and games, including iconic titles such as Fruit Ninja, Wolfram Alpha, Splashtop Remote Desktop, Dr. Seuss’s The Shape of Me and Other Stuff, TuneIn Radio Pro, TETRIS, PAC-MAN, The Lost City, MONOPOLY, AccuWeather Platinum and Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals. Birthday deals start today with one of the top paid apps, Plants vs. Zombies, at 67 percent off.

Tomorrow, Amazon will announce two more app deals. On day three, three more new app deals will be revealed and so on for the remainder of the week-long celebration. Also starting today, the Amazon Appstore kicks off its Amazon Appstore for Android Birthday Giveaway and will award a Kindle Fire to eight lucky winners who enter the sweepstakes by March 31.* For more information and for all birthday deals visit www.amazon.com/appstorebirthday.

“Customers have used the Amazon Appstore to test drive and buy millions of apps and games for their Kindle Fire and other Android devices in the first year alone,” said Aaron Rubenson, director of Amazon Appstore for Android. “To thank customers for shopping with us, we worked closely with our developers to offer special discounts on some of the most popular apps all week long.”

Customers can use Amazon’s Test Drive feature to test out apps before buying. Once they download an app they can use it across multiple devices, including Kindle Fire, giving developers a new platform for reaching customers.

“We know how important discovery and monetization are for app developers,” said Rubenson. “Our investment in personalization technology helps customers find the best apps for their needs. And, our 1-Click technology makes it trivially easy to purchase apps with one click.”

“It’s been an exciting first year in the Amazon Appstore and we look forward to many more,” said Andrew Stein, director of Global Mobile Business and Products at PopCap Games, Inc. “All of our games, including the megahit Plants vs. Zombies, have done extremely well in the Amazon Appstore, for both Kindle Fire and other Android devices; it’s a testament to the great Amazon Appstore shopping experience resulting from its user-friendly design and comprehensive catalog.”

“We expected that the Amazon Appstore would be a success and it’s been evidenced in the growth of the revenues since the launch,” said Adam Flanders, senior vice president of Sales & Marketing at Glu Mobile, Inc. “We have seen revenues from Amazon grow by over 1,000 percent in the four months since the Kindle Fire launched alone, and Blood and Glory recently reached the #2 spot in Top Selling Games. Glu is thrilled with the momentum behind Kindle Fire and the Amazon Appstore’s strong platform, global customer base, and exceptional merchandising capabilities.”

“We were grateful that we were able to bring Dr. Seuss, The Berenstain Bears and Mercer Mayer’s Little Critter apps to the Amazon Appstore from the very beginning,” said Michel Kripalani, president of Oceanhouse Media. “Amazon provides visibility to a huge customer base. We’ve seen increased engagement with the apps over the last year, especially since the launch of Kindle Fire.”

“As Pandora continues our mission to provide people with personalized music they love, being a featured app on Kindle Fire has given us an exciting new platform to connect with our listeners, both existing and new, and we’ve been impressed with the high engagement rate we’ve seen on Kindle Fire,” said Simon Fleming-Wood, chief marketing officer of Pandora Media.

“At Quickoffice, we’ve experienced a massive lift in our Android app sales since the launch of Kindle Fire. The Amazon Appstore has been a great showcase for our app, and we’ve seen significant gains in conversion rates compared to other app stores based on the integrated Amazon buying experience,” said Alan Masarek, CEO of Quickoffice, Inc.

Amazon Appstore has grown its selection nearly eight-fold since launch, from 4,000 apps to over 31,000.
In its first year, the most downloaded paid app in the Amazon Appstore was Cut the Rope, followed by Angry Birds (Ad-Free) and Where’s My Water?; the most downloaded free app was Angry Birds Free, followed by Netflix and Solitaire by MobilityWare.

Amazon Appstore offers a paid app for free every day. If a customer had downloaded every Free App of the Day since launch, they would have saved nearly $1,000.

The paid app with the most 5-star reviews in the first year of the Amazon Appstore was Where’s My Water?, with over 3,000; the free app with the most 5-star reviews was Blood & Glory, with over 4,000.
In the Amazon Appstore’s first year, customers spent more than 7,700,000 minutes test driving apps; Bubble Buster was the most test-driven app, followed by Amazon MP3 for Android with Cloud Player and Memory Trainer.

Over the past year, the most popular app category for customers is games, followed by entertainment and productivity. Some of the most popular apps include Angry Birds, Fruit Ninja, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, QuickOffice Pro, CalenGoo and Exchange by TouchDown.
Top Paid Apps (over the last 12 months)

1. Cut the Rope

2. Angry Birds (Ad-Free)

3. Where’s My Water?

4. Angry Birds Rio (Ad-Free)

5. Angry Birds Seasons (Ad-Free)

6. Plants vs. Zombies (Kindle Fire Edition)

7. Fruit Ninja

8. SCRABBLE (Kindle Fire Edition)

9. UNO (Kindle Fire Edition)

10. TETRIS

Top Free Apps (over the last 12 months)

1. Angry Birds Free

2. Netflix

3. Solitaire

4. Fruit Ninja Free

5. Angry Birds Seasons Free

6. Bubble Buster

7. Little Piano Free

8. Roller Lite

9. Jewels

10. Hangman Free

On this very day in 1985, Nintendo released a game that would forever change the company’s future, Super Mario Bros. Originally dubbed Jumpman, the character was eventually renamed by Nintendo USA after a surprise visit from their disgruntled landlord Mario Segale. Other fun facts about Mario include: he was originally a carpenter (not a plumber) and most of his iconic features (hat, suspenders, mustache) were added to give distinction to his  in-game face (which had to use 8-bit graphics). Since the original’s release in Japan twenty five years ago, the Super Mario Bros. game-franchise has sold more than 240 million units worldwide and Mario has appeared in over 200 different video games. The original version of Super Mario Bros. for the NES was the best selling video game of all time (40+ million units) until it was ousted by Wii Sports (41.5+ million units) just last year. Happy 25th birthday Super Mario Bros.

While the official 1-year anniversary of the App Store isn’t until Saturday, Apple apparently decided to start the celebration early. A new dedicated page headed with the colorful banner seen above appeared in iTunes this morning, proudly proclaiming that the App Store’s first birthday is upon us. So how is Apple celebrating this momentous occasion? By trying to get you to buy more apps, duh. Apple’s anniversary page is littered with Apple’s “favorite apps and games” alongside buy links to make sure they’re all nice and easy to snag. Shamelessness aside, there’s really no question that the advent of the App Store is among a handful of game-changing events that have taken place over the past few years. Over 56,000 apps… Well over a billion downloads… Every major competitor doing its best to mimic the offering… Yeah, it’s safe to say the App Store has definitely left its mark on the wireless industry.

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