Pros and Cons of Intel’s App store
This post about the Intel App Store is a follow up of our previous post: Does Intel’s App Store for Netbooks stand a chance?
The Intel App store is set to launch in 2010. It’s vastly meant for Windows-based netbooks and for netbooks running Intel’s Moblin flavor of Linux. Future interation with Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight is anticipated.
According to an interview with Scott Apeland, director of Intel’s Developer Network (via cNET),the network has between 700K and 1million monthly users and 20,000 independent software vendors. I’m not quite sure what these numbers mean (users = people who are participating with the program? testing the apps already developed?), but it seems there’s a large community which may just be large enough to support the foundling stage of the app store.
In a nutshell, here are the pros and cons of the store (read our previous post for background info):
PROS
- One stop shop for people looking for netbook applications (eventual competition for sites like cNET etc?)
- Will come pre-installed on Intel based netbooks, or netbooks from manufacturers Intel partners with. This could constitute as bloatware hogging the netbooks precious little hard drive space. On the other hand, if the app store software is lite weight, it could win over a lot of people.
- 70% of revenue from sales of apps will go to the app developers, thus giving them a vast incentive to create good apps. In addition, if the app store gets a good initial boost, mobile advertisers will direct their advertising budgets there too and developers stand to earn a lot from good apps.
- Quality & Security. Like the iPhone app store, I’m sure the Intel app store will have strict security guidelines for all apps submitted to the store. Considering Windows-based PCs are so prone to viruses, the security guarantee could give the app store the traffic it needs to survive.
- Helps small developers. App stores make it easy for small time independent developers to create simple apps and make money off them – in comparison to huge companies like EA games investing large amounts of money in making Intel-versions of their games.
- Broad range of apps – from simple innovative apps from small time developers, to more complicated apps from large companies (e.g. Microsoft, EA games, Adobe etc,)
CONS
- Huge competition – pre-existing PC software, the internet, software available for illegal downloading
- Steep learning curve – people in general don’t like (or understand) the unknown. Take for instance the netbook market itself. People weren’t aware that netbooks were low-performance versions of notebooks and were unhappy with them. Similarly, the apps might be misunderstood for full-apps instead of light-weight ones. (The iPhone is different enough in form factor from computers and so people had different expectations)
- The risk associated with anything new launching. A vague point, but it includes everything from low awareness to cost of advertising to trial&error issues etc.
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Filed under: Netbook Thoughts
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