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Reportedly, Internet retailer Amazon.com is at work building its own standalone mobile application store for Google Android devices that would possibly appear on Amazon's own Android-based tablet computers.

Amazon has yet to comment on these rumors, but gadget site SlashGear recently got its hands on what appears to be the Amazon Distribution Agreement, the legal document which interested developers would have to sign before being able to participate in Amazon's program.

Consumers will have downloaded 25 billion mobile applications to their smartphones by the year 2015, claims market research firm Juniper Research in a report released today. That's an increase from less than 2.6 billion applications in 2009.

Part of this projected increase is due to the launch of additional "app stores" worldwide, including those in large markets like China and India. However, cautions the report, just mimicking Apple's model alone may not be enough. "Customers are buying the iPhone for the apps," says report author Dr. Windsor Holden. "That's not been the case with other handsets."

Mplayit, a Facebook-based mobile app store, just released some interesting new data about people's willingness to pay for mobile apps. According to Mplayit's report, about one-third of users across all the major mobile platforms (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry) are interested in paid apps. iPhone users are the most willing to pay for some of their apps (57%), followed by BlackBerry users (33%). Android users are the least likely to be interested in paid apps (16%).

Verizon Wireless prepares to take on the big names in mobile application stores, including Apple and Google, with the launch of its own carrier-specific "Vcast App Store" next week. Here, customers will be able to purchase mobile apps and pay for them on their monthly wireless bill. The store's launch was announced at the recent CTIA conference, where Verizon disclosed the launch date (March 29) and revealed other details about the store's planned operation. Most notably, the new VCast store has a revenue model that mimics that of Apple's iTunes. Application developers partnering with Verizon keep 70% of the revenue generated from app sales, while Verizon keeps the remaining 30% for itself.

The arrival of Apple's App Store in 2008 changed the marketplace for mobile developers and mobile carriers alike. The App Store changed the perception of what an app store for mobile devices should look like and started a new arms race among mobile carriers and handset manufacturers. According to a new survey by market research firm Nielsen, however, Apple is still ahead of its competitors. Apple's customers install more applications on their device than users of any other platform and Apple's customers are also more satisfied with Apple's app store than the users of any other app store.

According to a study commissioned by mobile application store operator GetJar, the mobile application market will reach $17.5 billion by 2012. By then, the number of mobile application downloads will have also grown to nearly 50 billion from just over 7 billion in 2009. Although those numbers may seem high, they line up with other estimates, such as those previously reported by analysts at both Gartner and research2guidance.

Have we reached app store saturation yet? Apparently not. PC manufacturer Acer has just announced plans to launch its own application store designed for all the operating systems is supports, including Microsoft Windows, Windows Mobile, Google's Android platform and Google Chrome. The new store will launch mid-year for the first three platforms listed, with apps for Chrome set to launch later on. Although no exact time frame was given, the Chrome apps are likely to appear by the third or fourth quarter of 2010 to coincide with the debut of Acer's line of Chrome OS netbooks, a group that will account for 10% of Acer's ultra-portable PCs.

According to the analysts at research firm Gartner, mobile application stores are expected to generate revenues of nearly $7 billion over the course of this year. That figure is a combination of the $6.2 billion spent purchasing the mobile applications themselves combined with an additional $.6 billion generated through advertising revenues from in-app ads. Not surprisingly, Apple dominates this market, accounting for 99.4% of the market as of last year, states the report.

According to an independent analysis performed by investment-watching blog 24/7 Wall St., Apple's iTunes App Store has lost $450 million due to iPhone app piracy since it opened for business back in July of 2008. Although that number sounds high, they note it is small in comparison to the overall size of the App Store marketplace and the millions it generates in revenue each quarter - revenue that ranges from $60 million to $110 million according to previous estimates from a Bernstein analyst report cited in 24/7 Wall St.'s post.

However, in order to generate the $450 million figure, the author of the post uses some questionable back-of-the-envelope calculations that raise some flags. Our sources say that the real number is closer to $15 million to $20 million instead.

According to Mplayit CEO Michael Powers, the size of a mobile platform's app store is now mostly irrelevant. Facebook-based mobile app store Mplayit took a close look at the most popular apps for Android, BlackBerry and the iPhone and found that the most popular apps on all three platforms tend to be very similar. As the popular app stores continue to grow, users on all the major platforms also drift towards the same known brands and hits like EverNote and Pandora.