Amazon's Appstore for Android is obviously not as popular as the Play Store, though it is a decent alternative to Google's offering. It is primarily used on the company's own Fire-branded tablets that do not ship with Play services. If you do actually care about the Amazon Appstore and have purchased several apps and games from it, make sure that you don't update your device to the latest version of Android. The Appstore is broken on Android 12, and Amazon is yet to fix it despite the OS being out for over a month now.

Several Google Pixel users have reported on Amazon's forum (via Liliputing) that apps and games installed from the Appstore fail to launch on their device after upgrading to Android 12. Samsung Galaxy S21 owners are also facing the same issue after installing the One UI 4 update. In some cases, users are receiving notifications from the installed apps but are unable to open them. The problem seems to be with Amazon's DRM implementation and affects both free and paid apps.

The company acknowledged the issue almost five weeks ago, saying its "technical team is aware of this issue and they are currently working on a resolution," but no fix has been rolled out yet. It recently started displaying the following message on the Appstore on Android 12 devices:

We're excited about Android 12 too. Unfortunately we're working through some issues. Thank you for your patience while we get your Appstore back

An affected user shared a temporary workaround to solve the issue that involves decompiling the APKs of the apps, removing references to Amazon's DRM, and recompiling them with a self-signed certificate — a solution that's far too technical and cumbersome for the vast majority of users.

This doesn't paint a good picture for a company as big as Amazon, especially since Android 12 was available for beta testing many months before its public release. It's not surprising then that users are so frustrated by the lackluster attitude of the company towards its Appstore. Sadly, this is not the first time Amazon has been caught napping in making underlying changes to its app marketplace, and we doubt it'll be the last.