Amazon Instant Video Makes its Way to Android, and It's About Time

Did you know that Amazon’s Instant Video service wasn’t available on Android until today? I was emailed a release from the company earlier this morning, and my first thought was, “Wait… Android didn’t have Instant Video?”

It’s an easy mistake to make. After all, Amazon shows love to ALL platforms with many of its services. Kindle and Amazon Music apps are available no matter where you go. The company even makes its Android Appstore available to all Android devices, regardless of whether the phone or tablet comes from Amazon.

So the idea that this huge service — one that figures to play a big part in Amazon’s media aspirations — wasn’t on the world’s largest smartphone platform? Lunacy. Albeit, lunacy that has been corrected today.

Sort of.

Amazon hasn’t made it easy to get the Amazon Instant Video app for Android. You can’t just hop into the Google Play store and search for it, like you would in Apple’s App Store. Instead, you’ll have to download Amazon’s Appstore to your Android device and install the Instant Video app through that.

No other Amazon app available on Android works this way, so I’m baffled as to why Amazon would put this gate up in front of its consumers. TechCrunch is actually reporting that the Instant Video app in the Amazon Appstore has accumulated “over 4,000 one-star reviews,” which probably has less to do with the quality of the app and more to do with the ridiculous download/installation process Amazon has put in place.

But I’m sure anyone who can figure out how to install the Appstore and, later, Instant Video, will be happy to finally have access to all of the free Prime material on the service. There’s a lot of great content on Prime Instant Video. It’s just a shame Amazon is making Android users jump through hoops to get to it.