The price-cutting news also comes in the wake of the serious compromise of the Android Market in recent weeks.
As reported previously by Infosecurity, more than 200,000 Android smartphone users were infected by the credential-stealing DroidDream malware and, although Google remediated the issue by pushing a utility to users, confidence in the Android Market took something of a battering.
AndroidNews, a German news wire, has posted screen shots from the impending Amazon Android AppStore, which it claims appeared briefly last week at www.amazon.com/apps.
According to the Digital Trends news wire, meanwhile, Amazon tried a similar pricing strategy last year with Kindle e-books, so upsetting the publishers.
"If Google chooses to challenge these prices (or if Android doesn't amend them before an official launch of the app store), we could be looking at a repeat of the pricing war, which Amazon ended up ceding", says the news wire.
"The Android Marketplace has taken a media lashing lately, and the reports of virus-laden applications and Google's inability to effectively monitor this content isn't doing it any favors", adds the news wire.
Infosecurity notes that a price war on Android apps will be an interesting diversion, but history has shown that IT platform users will tend to favor a download source that has higher levels of security and where its applications are not infected with malware.
This perhaps explains the positive response to news of the secure Amazon AppStore on both smartphone and security forums.