Amazon is taking on Google at its own game and is all set to launch an Android app store.

A rival to Google Market, the Amazon store will allow you to pay for apps through Amazon's checkout system, according to TechCrunch.

Although the details of what an Android user would gain from getting apps from Amazon are sketchy, there's no doubting that a competing store to the Android Market would make Google up its game, especially given that Market is not nearly as polished as the Apple App Store.

Developer details

What details have emerged are to do with how developers will be paid and how much they have to pay to make apps for the store.

It seems that there is a $99 developer fee to join the program and the split of royalties is a confusing 70% of the purchase price or 20% of the List Price.

There will be an extra layer of DRM on the apps which make them unique to Amazon and, interestingly, if you are a cross platform app maker, you have to update the Android app at the same time as you update apps on other platforms.

The Amazon store is set to have both paid and free apps and the applications may show up in Amazon listings.

For now, it seems that this is US only, but as Amazon has brought the Kindle to the UK (finally) we expect there to be a UK version of the store as well.

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It's a good move by them, it'll be interesting to see if they can pull it off

I really hope it does well.

We have lots of competition when it comes to stores selling white goods, clothes, groceries etc. and it's generally considered a good thing.

This is why I do like the iTunes system. As a user, I just want a simple interface to download apps, that syncs between all my iOS devices. It is the one thing holding me back from trying Android.

You have the Google Store, as long as Google and the hardware manfacturer can agree terms (most (all?) tablets cannot access the Google Store), then lots of the service providers have their own stores and then you have the likes of Amazon, Motorolla, htc and totally open stores...

The open stores mean that you can get pretty much any app you want, but there is no checking for malware, even on the Google Store, and if I switch devices, I can't guarantee that all the apps I bought through one store will load on the new device, because it might not have access to certain stores...

Having multiple stores sounds like an advantage over iTunes, but in practice, it currently looks like a nightmare. I think Google really need to get control of their market.

Just being able to search apps online and get proper reviews would be a massive "plus" for the Amazon system.

It is the same for me. You can also avoid the dodgy apps stores selling trojan software.