Amazon’s Appstore saw a fourteen-fold increase in app downloads in December 2011 when compared to two months earlier, driven by the launch of the Kindle Fire and the Christmas holiday sales period, according to figures from Distimo.

This growth is providing developers with an alternative to Google’s own Android Market to reach consumers, the company said in an analysis of both stores’ performance in the US market – Amazon’s Appstore is not available internationally.

According to Distimo, of all the applications available in both stores, 110 generated at least US$200 each day in one or the other. Of these, 42 generated more in the Amazon Appstore than Android Market.

In total income terms for the 110 titles, some 28 percent was generated in the Amazon Appstore.

The company noted that “since the Amazon Appstore is available only on a limited number of devices compared to the Google Android Market, it shows the potential of the Amazon Appstore for developers.”

According to Distimo, there were almost 369,000 available apps available in the US Android Market during January 2012, compared with just over 26,800 for the Amazon portal. It noted that around 50 percent of all products in the Amazon Appstore are also available in Android Market.

However, when it comes to new additions, the gaps between the stores are narrowing. While 22 times more apps were added to Android Market in September 2011 in comparison to the Amazon Appstore, this had narrowed to 4.7 times by January 2012.

Interestingly, while paid applications are in the minority in Android Market, with the proportion of paid apps decreasing in the last seven months falling to 32 percent from 38 percent, these products are in the majority for the Amazon Appstore, being stable at around 65 percent of the total.

However, the average price of the top 100 paid applications in the Amazon Appstore is 40 percent lower than in Android Market – at US$2.24 and US$3.76 respectively. It was suggested that one of the reasons may be that Amazon is responsible for setting the price – “hence, some temporarily discounted top applications are cheaper in the Amazon Appstore than the same applications in the Google Android Market.”