Netbooks occupy a difficult market sector: not powerful enough for gaming or high-performance business tasks, but bulkier than a smartphone, it can be difficult to find software that’s a good fit. Intel has what it hopes is a solution: the AppUp Center.
Designed to capitalize on the massive success enjoyed by smartphone app stores – including Apple’s App Store, Google’s Android Marketplace, and with industry giant Microsoft starting to throw its hat into the ring with a store for Windows Phone 7 apps – AppCenter is, quite simply, an application store for netbooks.
Offering software specifically designed for the Atom processor – as found in the vast majority of netbooks currently on the market – AppUp is due to leave beta in September, at which point it becomes a one-stop shop for applications for your compact, portable wonder.
The service is designed to address two issues that netbook developers face: the fact that traditional software often performs poorly on a 1.6Ghz processor with 1GB of RAM and a low-resolution display; and the fact that when software that does perform well on netbook platforms is written, it can be hard for smaller developers to spread the word and popularize their packages.
AppUp works in the same way as smartphone app stores: developers submit their work to Intel, who upload it to the service. Users can leave comments and rate the apps, to make it more likely that the cream will rise to the top. While free apps will be available, Intel’s chief concern here – aside from making users of its Atom processors feel less like they’ve been ripped off with the Core Duo CULV’s weedy little brother – is to get developers to upload paid-for applications.
When an AppUp user buys an app, Intel will skim a little of the proceeds for itself – creating a semi-passive income, with only bandwidth and infrastructure costs to worry about.
Users of the beta version of the service have been universal in their praise for Intel’s innovation – or the company’s brass pair in blatantly stealing a development originally designed for the smartphone market and applying it to a segment in which they have a bigger stake – but not everyone is convinced.
Geek.com’s Cristian Zibreg, for example, believes that the company’s “narrowly-scoped motivation [is] inherently wrong – I just don’t see an ecosystem here,” and points to the rumors of a Windows-based app store due in the next release of Microsoft’s flagship operating system as being likely to tread on Intel’s toes.
One thing’s for sure: the next year is going to be an interesting time for application developers.
