Here’s one way to beef up your app store volume: put out a call for web apps to sell alongside native apps. That’s what Amazon(s AMZN) is doing, starting Wednesday.
The company announced it is now accepting apps built using HTML5 into its Amazon Appstore. That means users of the Kindle Fire will be able to browse the store and download these web-based apps the same way they have always been able to do with Android(s GOOG) apps.
From Amazon’s press release:
Developers can submit and distribute mobile web content without using third party software or doing any native app development, and they can take advantage of Amazon’s In-App Purchasing API for JavaScript, which provides them the option to build sales of digital goods into their apps.
There are currently just a handful of these new HTML5 apps available in the store at launch. Overall, Amazon’s Appstore has fewer than 100,000 apps for download. That’s significantly less than the 900,000 Google and Apple(s AAPL) boast in their stores, which only accept apps built for their platform.
HTML5 apps have found fans among media publishers who are moving away from native apps and toward web apps to display their content on mobile devices. But when it comes to other categories of apps and games, native apps have emerged as the preference so far — Facebook(s FB) is the best example of a decisive move away from HTML5 for mobile — because of fewer performance issues.
