The Galaxy Store () is an

app store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...

offering apps, games and exclusive themes and other customizations for mobile devices manufactured by

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (SEC; stylized as SΛMSUNG; ) is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation founded on 13 January 1969 and headquartered in Yeongtong District, Suwon, South Korea. It is curr ...

. The service is primarily supplied pre-installed on

Samsung Galaxy Samsung Galaxy (; stylized as SΛMSUNG Galaxy since 2015 (except Japan where it omitted the Samsung branding up until 2023), previously stylized as Samsung GALAXY; abbreviated as SG) is a series of computing, Android mobile computing and wear ...

smartphones and tablets, and Galaxy Watch wearables. It requires a Samsung account to be used.

History

The Galaxy Store has its origins in a mobile developer program launched in 2008, Samsung Mobile Innovator. Samsung Mobile Applications, an app store powered by

Handango Handango was an online store that sold mobile apps for personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smartphones. The company was headquartered in Irving, Texas. History Handango was founded in 1999 by Randy Eisenman. In 2003, it launched Handango ...

launched at

Mobile World Congress MWC Barcelona (formerly but still commonly referred to as Mobile World Congress) is an annual trade show dedicated to the mobile communications industry. The event is held in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain, at the Fira de Barcelona Gran ...

2009 providing software for

Windows Mobile Windows Mobile is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants (PDA). Designed to be the portable equivalent of the Windows desktop OS in the emerging Mobile device, mobile/port ...

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

, and (from August)

Java ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of porting, portable code for embedded system, embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digita ...

. The services had been established in China and several European countries by the third quarter of 2009. On 14 September 2009, Samsung Apps launched initially in western Europe, providing software for the Samsung Omnia (i900) and Samsung Omnia HD (i8910) smartphones with more devices added later. In 2010 it started offering apps for the Bada platform, which the Samsung Wave runs on. There were 10 million app downloads by September 2010 in Europe, made up of

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and Bada apps. There was also a Samsung Apps TV for

smart TV A smart TV, also known as a connected TV (CTV or, rarely, CoTV), is a traditional television set with integrated Internet and interactive Web 2.0 features that allow users to stream music and videos, browse the internet, and view photos. Smart T ...

s, which had gotten 10 million downloads by October 2011. Samsung also held a developer challenge called ''Free the TV Challenge'', which was won by WeDraw in 2010, an application that could draw on mobile and display on the TV screen. In March 2011 Samsung Apps was launched for the

Galaxy A galaxy is a Physical system, system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar medium, interstellar gas, cosmic dust, dust, and dark matter bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek ' (), literally 'milky', ...

line, running Android. Samsung Apps had 40,000 applications by its second anniversary in 2011. The store was also offered on

Samsung Gear Samsung Gear was a line of wearable computing devices produced by Samsung Electronics. The first device in the series, the Galaxy Gear smartwatch, was announced in 2013. Since then, the line has expanded to include fitness bands and earbuds, as ...

wearables and

Samsung REX The Samsung REX series is a range of Samsung smartphones and feature phones, ranging from low to mid-end phones, running a Java-based operating system with Samsung's TouchWiz user interface. It was one of the Samsung line of devices that are ai ...

feature phones. A feature called S Suggest (app and www.ssuggest.com) was launched in 2013 that would suggest apps from the store to users. This service was closed in 2014. In July 2014, with the Galaxy line mostly consolidating Samsung's mobile offerings, Samsung Apps was rebranded to Galaxy Apps. In 2018, Samsung began an annual award for the best developers, called Best of Galaxy Store Awards. At the inaugural award at the Samsung Developer Ceremony,

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was awarded 'Best App' and Wrist Camera the 'Best Watch App', amongst others. Galaxy_store_logo

In early 2019, soon after the introduction of

One UI One UI is a user interface (UI) developed by Samsung Electronics for its smart devices, including Android (operating system), Android devices from at least late 2016 or early 2017 running Android Pie, Android 9 (Pie) and later. Succeeding Samsu ...

, Galaxy Apps was rebranded to Galaxy Store. The store was redesigned in October 2020 with an increased focus on

games A game is a Structure, structured type of play (activity), play usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an Educational game, educational tool. Many games are also considered to be Work (human activity), work (such as p ...

Games rewards

The Galaxy Store features reward points given to users who purchase games.

Best of Galaxy Store Awards

The awards of the latest edition of 2022 were given to: * Best Theme Collection: Pengtai Interactive Advertising Co. * Best Wallpaper Collection: Bergen * Best Icon Pack Collection: Cogul Planet * Best Music App: Sirius XM Streaming by

Sirius XM Radio Sirius XM Holdings Inc. is an American broadcasting corporation headquartered in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, that provides satellite radio and online radio services operating in the United States. The company was formed by the 2008 merger ...

Inc. * Best Entertainment App:

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by Fandango Media * Best Podcast: SOLAR by CurtCo Media * Game of the Year:

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by Super Evil Megacorp

Samsung apps provided

The following is a list of apps and utilities provided by Samsung itself on the Galaxy Store. (as of September 2023)

Third-parties

Some third-party apps are also available on the Galaxy Store, despite Galaxy devices running on the

Google Mobile Services Google Mobile Services (GMS) is a collection of proprietary applications and application programming interfaces (APIs) services from Google that are typically pre-installed on the majority of Android devices, such as smartphones, tablets, and ...

platform which features the Play Store. These apps include the likes of

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curr ...

Microsoft 365 Microsoft 365 (previously called Office 365) is a product family of productivity software, collaboration and Cloud computing, cloud-based Software as a service, services owned by Microsoft. It encompasses online services such as Outlook.com, One ...

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a free content, free Online content, online encyclopedia that is written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and the wiki software MediaWiki. Founded by Jimmy Wales and La ...

, and

Clip Studio Paint Clip Studio Paint (previously marketed as Manga Studio in North America), informally known in Japan as ,A clipping of the Japanese pronunciation of its name, ''Kurippu Sutajio Peinto''. is a family of software applications developed by Japane ...

. Some Android games have been exclusive on the Galaxy Store, such as ''

Fortnite ''Fortnite'' is an online video game and game platform developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is available in seven distinct game mode versions that otherwise share the same general gameplay and game engine: '' Fortnite Battle Roy ...

'' for users in the US.

References