After being alerted by amateur and professional researchers that some Android Market apps secretly installed malware, Google has recently removed 55 malicious apps from the official Android Marketplace.

In their warnings about the malicious apps, security experts said that tens of thousands of users of the Android-based handsets have downloaded applications that can take over their handsets with malware which has been designed to steal contact information, passwords or stored financial data, or to place expensive calls or send texts.

Though the malicious apps, with names like Chess, Bowling Time and Super Guitar Solo, essentially aped legitimate programs; they also apparently enabled the developers to exploit a security flaw in almost all the versions of Google’s Android software.

Noting that this probably is the first ever incidence of malicious apps appearing in Android Marketplace, Kevin Mahaffey - chief technology officer at Lookout Mobile Security – said: “This is the only outbreak of malware in the Android market I can recall.”

Clearly, the disclosure of the Android security breach further substantiates industry forecasts that malicious software on mobile devices would become a pertinent issue this year.

Meanwhile, though Google has removed some of the malicious apps from the Android Marketplace, the users of Android devices have reported that the company has, thus far, not taken any official action to disable the malware that had been downloaded.