Intel gets into the App Store game - but where does Silverlight fit in?
Intel has announced its Atom Developer Program including a new app store. The idea is to encourage a flow of applications that are well suited to netbooks, rather than general desktop applications that tend …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the next step in Intel's long campaign to make Atom more than a cheap netbook CPU. Back in 2007 the company was pitching putting the internet in your pocket with mobile internet devices; this year it handed its Moblin Linux platform to the open source community to run on Atom, and confirmed it is developing Atom processors intended to replace ARM chips. An app store is the missing piece: a reason for developers to write specifically for Atom-class devices rather than porting general desktop applications.
The move also answers pressure from below. Nvidia's Ion platform showed that a rival could make small machines genuinely capable of rich graphics, so Intel now needs a software story, not just silicon — hence the headline question about whether Silverlight-style web runtimes or native store apps will define netbook software.
First-order effects
- Netbook developers get a dedicated distribution channel and SDK aimed at Atom's constraints — small screens, modest storage — instead of treating netbooks as shrunken desktop PCs.
- Intel shifts from component supplier toward platform operator, putting it in direct contact with developers who previously dealt only with Microsoft.
Second-order effects
- Nvidia's Ion and AMD's notebook platforms now have to compete on ecosystem, not just benchmark performance — especially awkward given Intel's Core i5 launch days earlier undercut AMD Phenom II on performance.
- Microsoft faces a chip vendor courting Windows developers into a parallel, Intel-branded storefront on what are overwhelmingly Windows machines.
Third-order effects
- If every major silicon vendor attaches a storefront to its architecture, application availability starts depending on which chip is inside the device — a structural split between ARM and x86 software ecosystems that echoes Intel's stated ambition of Atom displacing ARM.
- PC software distribution fragments along hardware lines, weakening the assumption that any Windows-compatible machine runs the same catalog.
The trend: Silicon vendors are bolting app stores onto their processors, turning chip selection into an app-ecosystem decision and extending the mobile store model back into PCs.