Amazon Prime Instant Video now available on any Android device

Great news Amazon Prime customers! Amazon has now made its Prime Instant Video app available to any Android device (well, any device running Android 4.0 or greater).

Just one day after announcing the Fire phone is coming to the UK, Amazon has started to roll out an update to its Amazon shopping app, giving access (to Prime customers) to the bundled movie streaming service.

Prime users can now search through movies and TV series’ via the store, before firing up the new app downloadable via Amazon’s own app store (so don’t bother to go looking for it on the Play store).

Until now, the only portable devices capable of streaming Prime Instant video has been Amazon’s own tablets, and the Fire phone.

Perhaps restricting access, in the hope of getting people to buy an Amazon device, has become less important than being able to open the service to a wider audience and compete more effectively with rival services like Netflix.

This makes sense, but the timing seems rather odd with the Fire phone still to actually start shipping in the UK. Only yesterday, access to Prime Instant Video on Amazon’s first smartphone was being sold as a key benefit.

Well, as of today, it’s no longer an exclusive. But as a Prime customer, I’m certainly not complaining and I doubt many other Prime users will be either.

The only disappointment is the lack of support for Chromecast, but let’s take things one step at a time…

More information: Amazon Prime Instant Video app (via Amazon)