Live outside the U.S.? Here's a few alternatives to Android Market & Amazon Appstore

[wicked]

Live outside of the U.S.? Can't purchase apps from the Android Market or the Amazon Appstore? Well here's a few LEGAL alternatives you might want to try.

SlideME





SlideME lets you browse its catalog of apps online or via an installable app called SAM that runs the whole experience on your Android device. This market focuses on promoting the work of small, independent developers. One advantage of this is that it’s a good place for publishers to scout out developer talent early, and app developers can be contacted directly via SlideME.
Free apps can be downloaded directly from the website, while those with a price attached are only available via SlideME’s app.




Handango




Handango is an online store that sells mobile software. Handango offers worldwide distribution, support, and e-commerce services to its partners. Company's customers include consumers, software developers, mobile operators, and original equipment manufacturers. Supported mobile devices include Android devices, Palm handhelds, Windows Mobile devices, Symbian OS devices, and BlackBerry devices.




MobiHand OnlyAndroid





An old hand at the app store game, MobiHand has been selling apps for a number of platforms for several years.
Via its OnlyAndroid store it offers a wide range apps and differentiates itself with discounted apps. This includes a “Deal of the Day”, where one app is offered at a significant discount for 24 hours. The store sells phone accessories such as chargers and cases in addition to apps.
MobiHand OnlyAndroid also offers an app to access its store from your phone.




Aproov





Newly launched Aproov is a Web-based app store initially focusing exclusively on free Android apps. Billed as “The way an app store was meant to be”, it takes a bare-bones approach to navigation with a list of categories displayed on the left-hand expanding to reveal a mixture of apps uploaded directly by developers and search results from the official Android Market.
Customer ratings and reviews are supported and developers are able to upload videos of their apps in action, something that is promised for the future in the official Android Market. As a new store, it all looks a little sparse right now, with few user reviews or videos to be found. However, this is a store worth keeping an eye on to see how it develops.




Opera Mobile Store





Opera Software introduced their Opera Mobile Store earlier this year. mobilestore.opera.com. This storefront is a featured Speed Dial link in the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers, which makes the storefront immediately accessible by more than 100 million people who use an Opera browser on their mobile phones. The Opera Mobile Store has been built and delivered through a strategic partnership with Appia, the leading provider of open application marketplace technology. The Opera Mobile Store offers both free and paid applications for virtually any mobile platform and device. The Opera Mobile Store is available to Opera users and users of other mobile browsers, on all popular mobile phone platforms in more than 200 countries. The Opera Mobile Store uses Appia’s storefront commerce technology and leverages a wide catalog of applications for phones with Java, Symbian, BlackBerry and Android operating systems. The storefront experience is customized to each user’s phone, providing a tailored catalog based on the phone’s operating system, local language and currency.




GetJar




GetJar bills itself as “The world’s second largest app store with over 1 billion downloads to date, second only to the Apple App Store”. The store support Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, iPhone and Symbian platforms. You can filter down to just the Android apps by setting your phone type in the top right-hand corner of the screen.
GetJar was the first place you could download the Android version of Angry Birds, before even the official Market. The game’s developer, Rovio cited GetJar’s global reach as the reason for its choice. Other exclusive launches include the Android version of iPhone game Slice It!, while the company recently took the interesting approach of paying developers up-front for games and then giving them away to customers for free.

[wicked]

Added Handango to the OP.

[in10city]

Thanks so much Wicked!!!!

[wicked]

Thanks so much Wicked!!!!

You're welcome my friend.

[hardrock]

Thanks for that. Do i presume other Asus owners in the UK also don't get any tablet specific filters or options when you go to the Google across market place ? Not yet anyway.

[bobbyelliott]

Yes, I don't see any tablet apps in Market, unless I search for them. How hard is this to do? Get the finger out Google.

[BetaRay]

Handango is great!

I live in Taiwan and I can get the Thumbs Keyboard from there.

Thanks for doing the dirty work so we don't have to.

[Androbot]

Thanks Wicked, a lot of people will benefit from this!!!

[stodwyer]

Hi all from the Emerald Isle of Ireland,
Thanks for the links to the alternative sites.
I finally received my asus on Wednesday. its a joy to use and makes my iphone 3gs look outdated.
I am after purchasing a 16gb micro sd card. I bought the sandisk one.

[vlbaindoor]

I have one major problem with most of these sites:

When I buy an App that is supposed to cost me say £1, as I live in the UK; I find that I end up paying £ 1.25 to the bank because they treat it as "International Transaction" and they are charging a fee.

This has two major problems as such:

1. I am discouraged from buying any Apps online.
2. I am paying into the Bank more fee than I am paying to the App developer - now this is not fair at all.

I would be happy if some organisation comes forward and sets up its business so that it gets treated as an 'on-line transaction' but would not attract this "International Transaction Fee". I had high hopes with Amazon.co.uk - but they are not even selling their Apps outside US - so they are no good.

Any such service? It could even be so that I buy a bunch of them in one go, the seller treats all of them as one transaction totalling say £10 or £15 or £20 and the bank would still charge £1.25 - that is better than paying 1.25 to bank for an app that costs £ 1.

It is an absolute outrage to pay £1.25 to the bank while I buy an app that costs £ 1. The App developers are subsidising the banks - after all those tax payers Pounds being spent on propping up these banks they want more from us.