• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 30, 2012

Along with Apple and Google, a third player is competing for a major share of app-generated revenue.

Revenue from Amazon’s Appstore is now 89% of iTunes App Store revenue, according to mobile analytics firm Flurry, while revenue from Google’s app business -- recently rebranded as Google Play -- is now 23% of iTunes App Store revenue. 

In an effort to compare the ability of app developers to generate revenue across the major app stores, Flurry examined a basket of top-ranked apps -- each with a similar presence across iOS, Amazon and Android. 

“Their primary business models are in-app purchase, which is the revenue type we compare for this analysis,” according to Peter Farago, vice president of marketing at Flurry.

Another way to interpret the results is that for every $1.00 an app generates in the iTunes App Store, it generates $0.89 in the Amazon Appstore, and $0.23 in Google Play. 

These results mirror those of a similar analysis conducted by Flurry last December, which found that for every $1.00 generated in the iTunes App Store, developers generated $0.24 in the Android Market.

When Amazon debuted its Android-based Appstore last year, analysts questioned whether the company could break into the business. Amazon, however, now boasts over 31,000 apps in its store, while more developers are signing the company’s praises. Game maker Glu Mobile, for one, reported that its revenues from the Amazon Appstore increased 1000% four months after Amazon debuted it Kindle Fire tablet.

“Amazon's bet to fork Android in order to put consumers into their own shopping experience on Kindle Fire appears to be paying off,” Farago believes. “Showing its commerce strength, Amazon already delivers more than three times the revenue in its app store compared to what Google generates for developers.”  

Looking ahead, he says that with "some of the lowest barriers to entry in the history of software development and distribution, apps are getting built and downloaded at breakneck speeds."

Earlier this month, Apple crossed a record 25 billion downloads from more than 550,000 available apps, while Google announced last December that it had crossed 10 billion downloads from 400,000 available apps.