Will an App Store for Netbooks work?
December 4th, 2009 by Annkur
At first thought it seemed as if it makes sense and a few minutes into the news that Intel is preparing its own App Store for netbooks, it seems as if the iPhone App Store success has influenced the tech industry way too badly. While many players are working on their own OS and almost everyone from Acer to Samsung are jumping on the app market. Service providers like Vodafone have also jumped on this wagon. So is the apps model so strong that it would rule netbooks awell? Does it add value? aren’t there enough free Google apps that are browser based? and isn’t the FREE Chromium OS already in works?
Intel is looking at the same business model that Apple does for the AppStore, passing on 70% of the revenues to the developers. The apps would be compatible with Intel’s upcoming OS Moblin and/or Windows 7. In my opinion the iPhone targets the power users and will continue to see the App Store boom, but netbooks is a different segment altogether. There may be some traction with this, but don’t expect this to be a billion downloads App Store anytime soon 
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Categories: Launch Pad, Tech Industry News, netbook | Tags: app store, app store for netbook, apps, intel moblin appstore, intel netbook, Moblin, notebook apps
The most important thing a lot of people seem to be overlooking is that apps are built using a programming language, development tools, third-party addons and a good community of developers. Companies who manufacture hardware generally do not have the means to deliver this. It’s companies like Microsoft and Google that are the foundation for software development. Software developers will tend to resist having to learn a large number programming languages and tools. The learning curve for each is usually steep in order to build high quality apps. This of course will have an effect on how much a software company is going to invest in any particular platform.
When hardware manufacturers start tinkering with the idea that they can have their own OS and development tools, in the end they actually are doing their own business more harm than good. The number of developers developing for their hardware will drop significantly because developers are not going to develop their app for several platforms.
Because Microsoft and Google have light years of experience in software development compared to hardware manufacturers, developers will always tend to choose to go with these platforms in order to cover a lot more hardware devices.
Intel, Nokia, Acer, Samsung and the rest of them need to drop this idea of building an ecosystem where they think that they can cover all areas of expertise in order to have a successful product. They need to stick with what they do best and that is developing high class phones and devices that are independent of the software. Leave the software wars to the real giants who have spent years if not decades going through evolutions of software design and development.
The same goes with building an app store. Not even Apple or Microsoft should be in this business. Building a high end app store is very complex. One of the key elements of such a store is that it should primarily exist to serve to benefit the customer and developer. Taking 30% of a developer’s revenue is really cruel to say the least. That’s why my business is undertaking the challenge to build the dream app store that buyers and developers have been waiting for.
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