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Amazon may be launching its Android App Store tomorrow, according to a new report, just in time to kick off this week's CTIA Wireless 2011 conference in Orlando, Florida. An unnamed "trusted source" told Wired that the store will launch Tuesday, March 22. Customers will be able to purchase apps both online via the Amazon website and through a native application designed for Android devices.

Thanks to a post on the Amazon AppStore Developer blog, we already know that the store's launch will come with at least one major exclusive: the latest in Rovio's Angry Birds lineup, Angry Birds Rio, will launch first in the Amazon App Store before being distributed to other online outlets.

Opera Software, the Norway-based browser maker, announced the opening of its Mobile App Store today. The store, which the company launched in conjunction with Appia, the "largest open application marketplace in the world," will provide apps to Opera's mobile browser users across a number of platforms.

According to the company, the store has already been a hit and its placement in its popular mobile browsers should ensure that it continues with this success.

When Google first introduced Chrome OS and the idea of "Web apps" last December, the idea made little sense to me. Then, over time, as I became used to it and started playing around with their prototype CR-48 unit, which runs the browser-based operating system, it began to make more and more sense. But still, there was something missing.

Today, Mozilla announced its own Web app initiative and, in just minutes, it makes so much more sense than the vision put forth over the several months since the same idea was first introduced by Google.

Yobongo, the iPhone app that "makes it super fun and easy to chat with people nearby," has finally gone live in the iTunes App Store. After a month in beta testing, Yobongo has shown itself to be a well-designed, functional mobile chat room.

Now, just one thing remains to be seen - can it deliver on its promise of "ambient real-time communication"?

Chomp for Android is a new release from Chomp, a company's whose search engine for iPhone apps launched last year. Available as both an online search engine and downloadable application, Chomp offers an attractive user interface for finding new Android applications which improves on the official Android Market application in many ways.

Unfortunately, where the service's search algorithm breaks down is in one of the most important aspects: the nature of what it indexes and how it ranks its results. This is why a search for "fitness" yields dozens of results but a search for "navigation" returns nothing.

This post is an excerpt from Rana Sobhany's new book, Mobilize: Strategies for Success from the Frontlines of the App Revolution. Mobilize walks developers through the positioning, marketing and outreach needed to create successful apps. In her opening chapter, Sobhany follows the history of the app store phenomenon from its early days through the successes, failures, loopholes, and overhauls that have shaped the multi-million dollar industry.

The App Store will continue to evolve, and participants in this new economy must continuously reevaluate and refine their relationship with the platform. Gone are the days of cheating one's way through the App Store.

In order to create a sustainable platform, we must document and memorialize the best practices that will serve as a guide and template for ensuring high quality on the store. While we can get crafty with our marketing campaigns and techniques, there must be a basal level of understanding for which acceptable practices will be moving forward.

Pocketgear, a major name in mobile application stores, has today announced a rebranding and shift in focus. It will now become Appia, a company focused on offering a white label app store platform for mobile operators, handset manufacturers and other mobile portals.

Already, Appia powers the app stores for over 40 industry partners, including 4 of the 5 top handset makers, one being the Samsung Widget Store, as well as stores for U.S. mobile carriers T-Mobile, Verizon Wireless and AT&T. In total, Appia serves apps through its platform to over 3,200 mobile devices.

If you're looking for a little bunny rabbit combat video game, consider Lugaru. But if you go to purchase the game from the Mac App Store, beware. There are two versions. One (for sale for $9.99) is Wolfire Games' - the startup is the creator of the game. The other's being sold by iCoder for $1.99. "Imagine our surprise," says Wolfire Games' co-founder Jeffrey Rosen, when the startup found that someone they'd never heard of was selling their game via Apple's new app store, and at a price that severly undercut the official version.

"This is a kind of software fraud we've never even heard of," writes Rosen in a blog post this evening, "a pirate simply downloading the app and resubmitting it to the same distribution channel at a lower price. We immediately emailed Apple explaining the situation, expecting them to quickly investigate the situation, shut down the fraudulent app, and follow up with us. We started this process a few days ago, and haven't heard back from Apple yet."

On Saturday, Apple announced its iTunes App Store had reached a new milestone: 10 billion app downloads. The 10 billionth app was downloaded by Gail Davis, a resident of Orpington, Kent, U.K. She won a promotional contest Apple hosted to celebrate this event, and is now the lucky winner of a $10,000 iTunes Gift card. Her kids are thrilled, no doubt, considering it was actually their download that led to the win.

As Apple noted in its press release about the event, the rate of application downloads has been surging in recent months. Of those 10 billion apps, 7 billion were downloaded in the past year alone. That's an incredible number. And even more incredible is the fact that this mobile app growth trend is showing no signs of stopping.

ThemeIt, a new app store devoted to iPhone customization, has just launched today. The store is only available to iPhone jailbreakers - those who use iPhone hacking tools to remove Apple's built-in restrictions that prevent the installation of third-party applications from outside of iTunes.

ThemeIt offers jailbreakers a selection of attractive themes which can be used within Winterboard, a popular jailbreak program for complete iPhone customization. For now, there are only paid themes available in ThemeIt, but a section devoted to free themes is arriving soon.

Meanwhile, Jay Freeman's Cydia application, the default jailbreak app store, has been updated to include a revamped theme section, too. For those of you into iPhone customization, today is a very good day.