Android Market On The Kindle Fire? Here Is How You Can Make That Happen

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Yesterday we covered the recently released one-click method of rooting your Kindle Fire. And well, today we are going to take that a step further and help you get up and running with the Android Market. Yup, the Kindle Fire is running Android and despite it not shipping with access to the Android Market — it can be added on.

Of course, the key statement here — this is not a process that everyone will be willing to do. It takes some time, the ability to read (and understand) directions and perhaps the most important — the understanding that sometimes things can go wrong. That being said, if you choose to move forward, do so at your own risk.

And with that, the process begins with making sure your Kindle Fire is already rooted. For those that need to get that taken care of, go back and check the post that fellow TFTS blogger Chris Smith wrote up yesterday.

Assuming you are already rooted, lets move forward. You will need to first download a few files, and given the source, we cannot directly link to them here. You will need to find two;

• GoogleServicesFramework.apk
• Vending.apk

The latest version of that second file is 3.3.11. And while we feel slightly bad about not linking directly, we trust that anyone willing to undergo this process will have the tools and knowledge to find them without that much effort.

Moving on, you will also need to get a Root Explorer App, which will allow you to modify the ro/rw permissions. And lastly, make sure you go into the settings area on the Kindle Fire and change the settings to allow for installation of files from unknown sources. For this navigate to Settings -> Device and then check the box to Allow Installation of Application from Unknown Sources.

From here, simply follow the step-by-step directions which come courtesy of the folks over at BriefMobile;

• Transfer the .apk files to your Kindle Fire via PC / Mac (remember where you put them)
• Open Root Explorer App, and navigate to the transferred .apk files
• Select the GoogleServiceFramework.apk and install
• When complete, click “Done” and return to the file location for Vending.apk
• Long-press Vending.apk and select the “Move” option on pop-up menu
• Navigate to /system/app folder
• Change mount option from RO to RW (read-only to read-write)
• Paste Vending.apk into the /system/app folder
• Long-press Vending.apk and select “Permissions” from pop-up menu
• Change permissions to match all other apps in this folder (rw-r–r–)
• Reboot your Kindle Fire
• Once reboot is complete, select Market App and log-in as usual.

And lastly, it was also noted that the Android Market will not show up in your app section while using the default Amazon UI. In other words, you will need to download and install a third party launcher. For that, there are more than a few available.