Intel AppUp Store Expanding Beyond Netbooks

You may not have realized it, but Intel's netbook app store has just turned 1.

You may not have realized it, but Intel's netbook app store has just turned 1. The store was announced at CES 2010 with just about 100 available apps. Now there are about 2000 apps available and the store is gaining some traction, even if the available software is almost negligible next to other app stores such as the original Apple App Store, which now holds 332,230 apps at the time of this writing and the 120,000 or so apps in eth Android store. heck, even Microsoft's mobile store has already 5700 apps and Google Chrome Web Store has 2200 web apps.

Intel is pushing the AppUp store aggressively as a marketing tool for the sale of netbook processors and there are now 11 different locations where the store is hosted, including the websites of Best Buy, Tiger Direct and Asus. In fact, the company recently said that demand for the apps is increasing. For 2011, The company says that the AppUp Store will expand beyond netbooks. Intel's Bob Duffy immediately mentioned "amazing" Windows tablets in his blog post and I take an educated guess that the AppUp store will now go after tablet applications as well.   

Not too long ago, Intel posted ten reason why you would want to develop for the App Store - and one of the reasons given was the fact that you could market your app very well since the store was virtually empty. It almost appears as if the excitement for the AppUp store reflects the current excitement for the netbook overall. Next year, when the AppUp store turns 2, we will know whether the tablet angle works better for Intel.