The world of Android app stores is about to grow once again. Last month we brought you a rumor stating that Amazon was planning on launching its own app store for Android, and now that news has been all but confirmed. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that they have viewed an Amazon document sent out to developers detailing the store. Some terms of Amazon's app store include Amazon taking 30 percent of sales, similar to Apple's App Store, and that an app must be made available on Amazon's store within two weeks of it appearing on any other shop. Other details of Amazon's offering are slim, though, as developers that have been spoken with the company don't know when the store will go live or what its name will be. There was no word of the rumored Amazon tablet that we've heard about in the past.
We already know that Verizon is planning to launch its own V CAST Android app store, as well, so all of this news certainly isn't helping disprove the Android fragmentation argument. The platform has recently been making strides toward eliminating its fragmentation with the increasing number of handsets running Android 2.1 or 2.2, but three or four different app stores could reverse all of this progress. I'm not sure why Amazon wants to build its own app store in the first place (except maybe for a tablet that it plans on manufacturing). One thing I do know, though, is that it would be interesting to learn what Google thinks of all of these new Android app stores popping up.
