Today in Tech: Amazon’s top author, cheaper iPhone all-but-confirmed

A curated selection of the day’s most newsworthy tech stories from all over the Web. Sign up to get the newsletter delivered to you everyday.

Forrester Research projects that mobile app sales will likely reach $38 billion by 2015 and that developers will spend up to $17 billion making them. And in fact, tablet devices alone could also generate $8.1 billion in app sales, too.(Forrester Research)
.08% of all Gmail users lost access to their inbox contents over the weekend. Google issued numerous updates since the outage started, assuring affected users their inboxes would be restored soon enough. (Fortune)
Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi reported on a meeting with COO Tim Cook, CFO Peter Oppenheimer and VP of Internet services Eddy Cue,, during which the three Apple execs referred to the iPhone as “the mother of all halos” — it pretty much trumps previous Apple devices in encouraging sales of other Apple products like Macs — implied a cheaper iPhone is likely on the way (it shouldn’t be “just for the rich,” but “for everyone”), and agreed that tablet sales could one day surpass PC sales, accounting for as much as $100 billion of business for the company. (Engadget and Forbes)
Meet Amanda Hocking. The 26-year-old writer actually sells about 100,000 copies of her books via the Kindle store without a traditional book publishing deal. Which means she pockets 70% of each copy sold, priced at between $.99 and $3 each. Not bad, eh? (Business Insider)
App platform DotCloud announced it had raised $800,000 from notable angels including Ron Conway, Chris Sacca and Jerry Yang. Unlike similar services like acquired platform-as-a-service Heroku, DotCloud gives companies much more flexibility, allowing them to “mix and match” developing tools and use multiple developing languages. (TechCrunch)
A survey from the Information Solutions Group found that the mobile phone is increasingly becoming the gaming device of choice, with one-third of all surveyed U.S. and U.K. adults claiming to have played a game on a mobile phone at some time in the past. 78% indicated that playing mobile phone games had become a regular part of their weekly activities, and 59% reported that they gamed on a daily basis. (PopCap Games and Information Solutions Group)
Two extremely popular Chinese web sites, Baidu and Taobao, were named “notorious markets” by the U.S. Trade Representative for helping the illegal sale of goods or materials protected by copyright or patents. Other companies on the list of 30-plus Internet and physical markets included included The Pirate Bay in Sweden and the Silk Market in Beijing. (Bloomberg)
If you’re fascinated by Charlie Sheen’s career implosion but haven’t been able to keep up, check out Xtranormal and NWA News’ computer-generated segments about the troubled actor. Accurate? Nope. But entertaining, nonetheless. (Mashable, Xtranormal, and NWA News)