Millennial Media, the top independent mobile advertising firm, likes to see a robust variety of platforms for distribution of content on smartphones that they can sell advertising against. They are so excited about platforms that they tweeted yesterday a bit of apparent news that got the tech press in a tizzy: Amazon's own Appstore for Android is expected to launch this month.

The Tweet that generated news simply read: "Launching this month! Amazon Appstore for #Android—learn more here: http://bit.ly/4C4HBm."

It linked to a blog post by Millennial's Jeff Tennery, senior vice president of publisher services, who wrote about the coming Amazon Appstore.

At the moment, the two big App stores are Apple's and Google's Android Market. But since Android is an open platform, Amazon is able to set up it's own app store for developers. (And, by the way, there are several other independent Android app stores out there, such as AndSpot, SlideMe, and AndAppStore.) The store's been expected for months now, but it's taken on new significance for Amazon, which is concerned about how it can continue to sell books for its Kindle app for iPhone as Apple appears to be tightening control.

Where Google allows pretty much anything in their store (until users complain about it), Amazon will be curating the apps -- reviewing them for a week or so -- before publishing them for people to download, the way Apple does. Their hope is to cut down on the crummy Android apps out there. (Not like there aren't crummy iPhone apps, by the way.) Like Apple, Amazon would take a 30 percent slice of app sales, but it's a little more complicated, because Amazon will be the one setting the price for the apps, not the developers.

Many presume that Amazon wants this authority so it can use its sophisticated pricing algorithms to get the best prices for the apps. But such control over pricing may not sit well with some developers.

Long-term, creating an App store for Android developers on Amazon sounds like a wicked smart idea. Developers will have in their corner the online marketing muscle of one of the Web's most powerful retailers. As Amazon now suggests to you different books and products based on your browsing history, you likely can expect recommendations on Android apps to download, which will help users discover new, relevant apps (you hope.)

And, like Apple's iTunes, Amazon already has the credit card information for tons of people on the Web.

It will be interesting to see if this takes off, no?