When it comes to Android apps, there aren’t many companies that give the Google Play Store a run for it’s money, but Amazon sure is trying. The Amazon Appstore comes pre-installed on a lot of the phones we review here at Android Community, and it’s the only app store Amazon allows on its line of Kindle Fire devices, despite the fact that they’re all based on Android. Today, Amazon announced that Appstore downloads have grown by 500% in the past year, which is an absurdly huge number.

As is usually the case, Amazon didn’t share any solid sales data, so we’re left to wonder where the Appstore was a year ago and where it is today in terms of downloads. Amazon also says that the number of games using the company’s GameCenter has doubled since the launch of the Kindle Fire HD, so it seems that tablet singlehandedly gave games on the Appstore quite the boost. It also seems that in-app purchases are the way to go for Appstore developers too, as 23 of the top 25 apps in October used them.

Interestingly enough, all of those statistics were merely footnotes to Amazon’s more important announcement. Today the company announced that it has rolled out an A/B testing beta for Appstore developers. With A/B testing, developers can “test simultaneous treatments of their apps, receive data about what’s worked best, and quickly adjust their apps to take advantage of this customer learning.” If you’re an Appstore developer and you want to give A/B testing a spin, you can download the SDK here.

So, it would appear that Amazon is taking this whole Appstore thing very seriously. The Google Play Store is still easily the biggest Android app store around – and it most certainly will be for a while yet – but you can bet that Amazon will keep pumping resources into its own Appstore to make things work. We’ll just have to sit back and see how this all plays out as time goes on, so stay tuned.

[via Amazon]