We’re here at Intel Elements 2011, a “one year later” event from where we first heard Peter Biddle lay out a rather large vision for the Intel AppUp Center. Without going back into the history and our previous thoughts on AppUp I find myself feeling increasingly invested in this thing. Far more than getting tied up in what AppUp is or is not, I’m fascinated by what AppUp wants to become.
From day one, AppUp was a very big idea – one that would take time to implement and several evolutionary iterations to perfect. And yet the nature of the app business lends itself to a very short time horizon on our parts. We think about what app is hot and what devices are new in a frenzied loop of hour-by-hour evaluations. The truth is I find Peter Biddles’s vision a powerful thing exactly because it is NOT a model for the next 6 months but for (at least) the next 6 years. The plan is different than all the Me Too stores because it seeks to achieve something bigger like changing the way we all buy and own intellectual property.
That said, it could be argued that big ideas are a dollar a dozen – better than a dime a dozen, but still cheap. But here again is a place where I’m repeatedly impressed with this team at Intel. They seem committed to the long game and many times since CES 2010 the press has written this thing off and instead Intel doubles down. Case in point – all the recent rumors that Intel was abandoning MeeGo. Somebody, somewhere caught wind that Samsung was starting to participate in MeeGo and jumped to the conclusion that Intel must be jumping out. Well today we learn that it’s the opposite. Samsung is contributing its LiMo project to the Linux foundation bringing MeeGo a leap step forward, not a clumsy exit stage left. Intel isn’t just involved, they were critical in bringing MeeGo to this whole new level – totally the opposite of what the moment-focused app press suspected.
So yeah, I appreciate the vision which is impressive. But I deeply appreciate the tenacity Intel has shown and I for one, continue to be very bullish on this AppUp thing.
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For reference sake, here are a few of the past articles on the topic of AppUp:
- Where the Intel App Store Fits In
- An Open Letter to Intel on The AppUp Center
- Intel AppUp 1 Year Later