• by Steve Smith  @popeyesm, January 3, 2012

While Amazon remains cagy over the exact sales figures for its Kindle Fire this holiday, early anecdotal evidence suggests the device is sparking activity in the Amazon Appstore for Android. The developer of the popular Tiny Flashlight utility for the Android platform tells TechCrunch he saw an enormous spike in downloads from the Amazon-hosted app market on Christmas Day.

Ordinarily, Nikolay Ananiev gets a trickle of interest from Amazon’s app store -- perhaps 800-1,000 downloads a day compared to 200,000 daily in Google’s formal Android App Marketplace. Amazon’s alternative market has been available to Android phone and tablet users since earlier this year, but using it requires extra steps that most users have not bothered to take. But with the arrival of the Kindle Fire, Amazon’s Android Store is now the default for this bestselling device. Ananiev says the difference was obvious. In the run-up to Christmas Day, he saw Tiny Flashlight downloaded via Amazon 3,000 times on Dec. 23 and then 33,111 times on Christmas Day itself -- generally regarded as the peak day each year for app downloads on devices. While the rate of downloads declined later, Dec. 26 still topped 20,000 downloads and on subsequent days last week surpassed 5,000 downloads. Ananiev says he achieved this popularity without any special featured placement or promotion by Amazon itself.  

Ananiev also tells TechCrunch that with Tiny Flashlight now among the top 30 apps in the Amazon store, he estimates that the top apps on the platform are being downloaded at a rate of about 70,000 a day.

According to Amazon’s Appstore bestseller list, games dominate the most popular apps list, led by "Angry Birds" (#1), MobilityWare’s "Solitaire" (#2) and "Fruit Ninja" (#4). Netflix (#3) is the only non-game app to make top ten of free downloads. All ten top paid downloads are game titles.