Mobile cloud platform company Appcelerator, makers of the cross-platform Titanium platform for building mobile, tablet and desktop applications, is today announcing the launch of the “Appcelerator Open Mobile Marketplace.”
The new store, which was announced at the company’s Codestrong Developer Conference this afternoon, includes mobile app modules, templates, design elements, cloud extensions and other components for the Appcelerator developer community to use.
At launch, the store will offer 50 mobile solutions from PayPal, Salesforce, Millennial Media, AdMob, Box.net, Dropbox, Bump, TestFlight, GetGlue, DoubleClick, Greystripe, Omniture (Adobe), Flurry, Scanbuy, Twilio, Urban Airship and others. It will also include mobile gaming modules like Gamekit, OpenGL (graphics) and Box2D (physics).
Third party developers will be able to list and sell their HTML5 mobile app modules and components in the store, too. Self-serve tools are being made available to publishers, allowing them to upload their content, maintain listings, promote their assets, and integrate with existing subscription services. Apps can be either free or paid, says Appcelerator. Revenue on paid apps will be shared with developers via the standard 70 (developer)/30 (app store) split.
Below, an example of a component built by the Titanium app developer community:
All components are designed for easy integration with Appcelerator’s mobile platform, which allows developers to build native apps using open Web standards. The Marketplace will now be included as a feature within Titanium’s development workflow, the company says.
The Appcelerator Open Mobile Marketplace comes on the heels of TechCrunch Disrupt finalist Verious‘ own app store launch just last week. Like Appcelerator, Verious’ store includes mobile app components and self-serve component listing tools. But Verious also allows developers to request mobile app components by stating how much they would be willing to pay for a given bit of code. In the future, developers using Verious will be able to rate, review and comment on the listings, too.
Verious has a different revenue model than Appcelerator, which is based on commissions (20-40%), referral fees for premier partners and revenue share for server-side partners.
Scott Schwarzhoff, Appcelerator’s VP of Marketing, says that his company’s store is “significantly different” from others because it targets the 1.5 million mobile app developers in Appcelerator’s ecosystem.
“In addition,” says Schwarzhoff, “we’ve signed up over 1,000 customers including NBC, eBay, Kellogg’s, Merck, Medtronic, GameStop and others. We felt it was important to establish the demand for a marketplace first, much like Salesforce did before AppExchange and Facebook before it opened up its API.”
Verious Founder and CEO Anil Pereira says that Appcelerator’s app store is “great” for Javascript developers, but for native developers, Verious is the way to go.
“In our conversations with thousands of app developers to date, we have found that native development wins out over Javascript when you are trying to deliver apps that take advantage of the complete range of smartphone and tablet functionality coupled with high performance,” says Pereira. He also likens his company’s product to “Switzerland,” as its not limited to iOS, Android, HTML5 (soon), etc.
The new Appcelerator component app store is live now at: marketplace.appcelerator.com.
Updated 1:34 PM ET with comment from Verious.
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