Appcelerator, the mobile cloud platform for developing native mobile, desktop, and tablet applications using web technologies, is launching its own marketplace, harping on a trend that’s booming in certain sectors, but lacking for the developers sector.  The “Appcelerator Open Mobile Marketplace” was announced at the company’s CODESTRONG Developer Conference held in San Francisco, CA this week.

The Open Mobile Marketplace will be a venue for ISVs and cloud providers to sell software and solutions across multiple mobile operating systems on Appcelerator’s industry-leading Titanium platform and to its growing developer community of more than 1.5 million developers.

It’s this community of developers that helped Appcelerator to reach the decision to create this market, and looking at all the tools the company has rolled out over the years, the app store is a natural extension of what Appcelerator’s all about.  And with such a community, Appcelerator’s able to focus on the buyer and seller side, nurturing an ecosystem that helps develop B2B relationships as well as revenue opportunities for mobile developers, especially as they look for specialized gaps to fill beyond the mainstream Apple and Google app stores.

“We’ve been building out this community of 1.5 million developers for the past two-and-a-half years, and we thought that it’s essential to creating a thriving ecosystem,” says Appcelerator’s Scott Schwarzhoff.  “Once you create the sand, you can do what Salesforce did with AppExchange, or Facebook with f8.  Think about the capabilities that can be added into the marketplace, looking for a way to scale.  Box is a perfect example–there’s a lot of need for cloud services and storage.  They fill a key need for our developers and at the same time Box isn’t necessarily targeted at developers.  Their job is storage, but we allow them to scale.”

Using the Box example, it’s clear that Appcelerator really is appealing to both sides of the market with its store.  In providing extensions like Box, Appcelerator is providing many commonly integrated services mobile app developers leverage for their own consumer-facing products and services.  So not only do developers receive a marketplace of ready-to-integrate extensions, but they have a marketplace to sell their extensions as well.
The Open Mobile Marketplace launches with 50 leading mobile extensions, including PayPal, Salesforce, Millennial Media, and a full gaming platform.  The marketplace also enables any third party to sell native and HTML5 mobile modules, app templates, design elements, and other cloud extensions to Appcelerator’s entire developer community.

Unlocking Mobile Innovation

Developers are faced with the problem of fragmented cloud and software development industry and this is what Appcelerator’s Open Mobile Marketplace aims to address.  Developers are finding it hard to deliver consistent services across multiple platforms such as Android and iOS, but with Appcelerator’s use of open web standards, a robust platform with over 3,600 native features, and now a Marketplace, cloud and software vendors can build solutions on one integrated mobile platform that can be used by web developers worldwide, while also maintaining focus on the consumer by reaching across multiple mobile OS’s.

Open to Everyone, Simple to Publish, Easy to Make Money

The Marketplace is available for any developer or business who wants to publish a native or HTML5 mobile module, app template, or mobile cloud service.  Appcelerator offers self-serve tools for publishers to upload content, integrate with existing subscription services, promote assets, support and maintain offerings.  Assets can be free or paid, with a 70/30 revenue share agreement available for paid-for content.

Titanium Studio, Appcelerator’s industry-leading, cross-platform IDE, has also been updated to integrate Marketplace into the Titanium mobile development workflow.  Similar to Apple iTunes, Appcelerator will feature popular modules, staff favorites, and modules developed by Appcelerator partners.

“From day one, Appcelerator has been focused on enabling a thriving, successful mobile ecosystem,” noted Jeff Haynie, CEO of Appcelerator.  “With over 25,000 mobile applications in use by over 20 million users, we have the most successful, cross-platform developer ecosystem in the market.  The stage is set for enabling the entire mobile value-chain to scale their business by increasing their reach and adding innovation on top of the Titanium platform.  This open and extensible approach represents the future of where Titanium is going as a platform and where Appcelerator is going as a company.”

The launch of the Open Mobile Marketplace is congruent with a previous service they launched that offered companies the ability to build, test and deploy apps in the cloud. In line with Appcelerator’s cross-platform ideals, this is open to iOS, Android, BlackBerry, PCs, Macs, HTML5 and Linux.  The upgrade to its flagship Titanium Studio is among the first offerings of its kind, turning a cloud solution into a unified solution that flows directly into the industry’s burgeoning marketplaces.

Appcelerator also launched the CODESTRONG Hackathon contest, running September 6 until tomorrow, September 20.  The contest hopes to discover fresh talent in the mobile applications development arena.

Contributors: Mellisa Tolentino