Keeping up appearances
Back at IDF in September Intel announced its AppUp centre - an app store catering specifically for Atom-based devices - would be coming to the UK on 1 November. We just received an announcement, dated 4 November, that it has arrived.
As promised, the AppUp centre appears in the UK courtesy of Dixons retail, as manifested through PC World and Currys. It's being positioned as an app store for netbooks and is a potentially decent idea.
Netbooks are really no less mobile than a tablet and, as such, there's room for a class of application - as we used to call them in the olden-days - that is designed to get the most out of a netbook specifically.
It's easy to conclude Intel has left this too late, with tablets threatening netbook sales, but the install-base of netbooks will remain pretty big for a while yet.
The respective app stores can be accessed at www.currys.co.uk/appstore and www.pcworld.co.uk/appstore, but they require a download that we can confirm won't install on an AMD/Vista desktop, but is fine with an AMD Windows 7 notebook.
Intel AppUp will be preinstalled on all Advent PCs from next year. There are apparently already over 1,000 apps and they come with a ‘try before you buy' period.
"With Intel AppUp, we can offer our customers easy access to a rich set of secure apps, with an engaging ‘try before you buy' policy," said Jeremy Fennell, category director at Dixons Retail. "Making this netbook app store available fits perfectly into our multichannel strategy, where we are maintaining a customer relationship with our clients, in between their store visits."
As you can see from the screenshot we took below, there's no Dixons branding on the AppUp store, so all it's really bringing to the table is a download link on the two sites. Graham Palmer, director of Intel UK and Ireland, said: "It's great to see a UK retail chain at the forefront of this initiative, being not only the first in the UK to offer this service, but the first in Europe as well."
