Amazon is looking to increase the reach of its Android Appstore in the coming months by making it available in nearly 200 countries – including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, and even Papua New Guinea and Vatican City. Right now, the Amazon Appstore is only available in the U.S, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and Japan.

Once the Appstore launches internationally, developers will be able to sell apps in all these new markets automatically, unless they choose to not make them available in a particular country. Amazon still isn’t bringing the Kindle Fire to (most of) these markets, and since most of the Appstore’s sales are through Kindle devices, it isn’t going to be that big a monetization opportunity for developers, though it will surely increase their target markets.

Google Play users won’t exactly be jumping with joy at this news, since except for a few games and apps that exclusively launch on Amazon before coming to Play, there isn’t much advantage they get with the Amazon Appstore, but choices of alternative app stores is one of the biggest boons of Android so no one should complain.

Watch out Google and Apple, you’re about to get some heavy competition real soon.

Via: Business Wire