App stores for mobile and desktop applications are becoming increasingly popular among software providers as they allow developers to seamlessly access a wide range of applications, features and upgrades. Some stores also allow developers to buy pre-built layouts, themes and functionality components in order to save time in the development process.
Appcelerator, a mobile cloud platform used to develop native applications for Android, iPhone, Linux, Mac OS and Windows, has created an application store that allows developers to purchase specific modules in order to enhance their applications without increasing the amount of time it takes to develop. The store is called Appcelerator Open Mobile Marketplace, and it allows any seller to publish a native or HTML5 mobile application module, app template, or mobile cloud service.
“Any seller can sign up and sell software, file extensions and other materials to our install base of 1.5 million developers, 200,000 of which are mobile developers,” said Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing at Appcelerator.
Appcelerator uses open Web standards to allow cloud and software vendors to build solutions that can be used by Web developers for any mobile platform, and natively for Android and iPhone.
User interface functionality modules can also be purchased through the Open Mobile Marketplace, similar to WordPress front-end design templates that can be purchased from sites like ThemeForest.net.
These modules will allow developers to save time on the design of an application and allow it to have a more uniform theme throughout all colors and interactions.
Schwarzhoff said Appcelerator hopes this will help cloud service providers share their capabilities with developers without having to market directly to them. For instance, Box.net, a cloud storage provider, could be used as a back-end server for other application API calls or a place to store the assets.
Other examples include applications that have already had great success in specific app stores, like GetGlue, which allows developers to check in to specific television shows, movies and other entertainment venues.
“GetGlue has had over two million downloads of our own app,” said Alex Iskold, CEO AdaptiveBlue, the creator of GetGlue. “Through Appcelerator’s Marketplace, we can now scale our business to enable the Get Glue social check-in capability for any application.”
As of this writing, Schwarzhoff said Appcelerator has teamed up with almost 50 leading mobile applications and Web services, such as Bump, PayPal, Scanbuy, Twilio, in order to offer these services to their application developer community.
Titanium Studio, Appcelerator’s IDE, will also integrate the Marketplace into the developer workflow, which will show developers using Titanium popular picks, staff favorites and Appcelerator-developed modules, similar to Apple’s iTunes store presentation.
