Adobe Now Offers Shareware Option for AIR developers

– taterboy | October 6th, 2009

Filed under: Flash, Flex

Just announced, Adobe is adding a shareware option to the AIR Marketplace and handling the credit card transactions. Built much like the iTunes app store, developers can submit apps to the AIR Marketplace where consumers can purchase apps using their adobe accounts. Adobe handles the credit card processing, licensing and protecting your applications from being distributed to non paid users. Developers can now offer a free trial period for potential customers to try out their apps before purchasing them. Though the free trial period is unlike the iTunes store, but the fees for the service are the same, a 70% vs 30% revenue split between the developer and Adobe.

To see the new offerings:
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/marketplace/index.cfm?event=marketplace.categories&marketplaceId=1&categoryid=10080

Will a service like this catch on?
With online computer application distribution services like download.com and versiontracker.com what would be the draw that would attract potential buyers to the AIR Marketplace? We can only assume Adobe sees a revenue potential in app sales, a way to drive sales of their development products or a little of both. Adobe is a big fish and has the power to draw attention to the AIR Marketplace. The only problem is the computer application market is already saturated so the potential fast buck, like we saw in the early iTunes App Store days, may not apply.

Developing AIR applications with Flash and Flash Builder are great, the only downside to having apps that can compete with native computer applications in performance. Most of AIR’s architecture runs on a single thread, meaning two or more processes cannot happen at once. This can cause the application to freeze until the a process complete and then move on to the next process. This requires some ingenuity in get your apps to run well. Still there is a lot of potential in have a development environment that can product applications that run on multiple platforms such as Windows, Mac and Linux.

HD Interactive releases 4 Apps to the AIR Marketplace with the trial service.

ChessJam:
A live online chess app that brings new attitude to chess. Though playing chess online is not new, playing chess in a rich internet application is. Now chess players can enjoy some the the same atmosphere while trying to concur their foes as other visual rich online apps.
The application is free to try for a limited time, before doling out the onetime purchase price of $15.

We Can Play Hangman:
Play hangman using printable flash cards and a webcam. Just hold a letter in front of the webcam to see if your guess is correct or not. The keyboard is also supported, just not as cool.

I Can Learn My ABCs:
Alphabet flash cards go digital with this interactive learning tool. Kids hold up printable flash cards in front of a webcam, the computer show of both cases of the letter, it’s sound, a word representation and an illustration. Sometimes you have to wonder is the app teaching letters to your child or is you child teaching the computer the alphabet.

WorkWatch:
A project and time tracking application. It is the little brother subscription based application called WorkWatcher which is a business/resource management application. WorkWatch is easy to use, just enter in your projects and rates, then keep track of all or your billing hours.