Samsung aims to double the number of monthly active users (MAUs) of its Galaxy Apps Store in the US from 24 million today to 50 million, a manager told VentureBeat news site GamesBeat.

Ravi Belwal, head strategic partner manager for games at Samsung, said the launch of the vendor’s Galaxy S8 device in the US should provide a welcome boost in MAU numbers.

“Whenever there is a new device, there is a spike in both revenues and downloads…We’ve got a way to go, but this is a good start, and we have strong momentum.”

The Galaxy Apps Store is not nearly as big a player as the App Store and Play Store, but is aided by coming comes embedded on all the smartphones shipped by Samsung, the biggest smartphone maker in the world.

Samsung curates its store, Belwal explained, and is focused on hundreds of thousands of apps rather than millions, making discoverability for consumers and monetisation for developers less complex.

Supercell, Zynga and Halfbrick are among Samsung’s “hand-picked” partners.

According to the report, Samsung is investing in the app store in China, where it is pushing its Tizen-based smartphones, and is also focusing on markets including India, Malaysia, and Indonesia.

“The India market is exactly like China was in 2011, when nobody was buying but downloads were high,” Belwal said. “Users don’t want to buy anything, but they will watch a video ad. The growth in ads has convinced some companies, like Imanji (maker of Temple Run) and Halfbrick (maker of Fruit Ninja), to come on the Tizen store with their games.”

Tizen also features an app incentive programme through which if an app makes it to the monthly top 100 rankings, its makers can win $10,000.

Meanwhile in the apps space, Samsung has recently launched two apps: the first is called In-Traffic Reply, which uses sensors and GPS to figure out when a driver is on the road and sends automatic responses when they are getting calls or messages so that they don’t need to take their focus off the road.

In-Traffic Reply is currently in beta, with the full version coming out in mid May and will be available in the Google Play Store.

The second is Wemogee, an emoji-based chat app designed to enable people with language disorders to express their ideas and emotions.