Here are some facts, thoughts, and a conclusion concerning AppWave.
- Embarcadero has announced their latest thing called AppWave.
- Marco has a pretty good article about it on his blog.
- It appears to be sort of a “AppStore for Windows”. You can sign up for the AppWave store and publish your wares. It looks like Embarcadero will provide the tools to virtualize your application, as well as to provide sales support. You just write the app, post it, and watch the cash meter go up.
- Amazon
has an interesting announcement this morning,
- They are creating a “CloudDrive” for storing your music out in the cloud. You’ll be able to play your music from any computer, as well as from your Android phone.
- You can get 5GB for free (I signed up already). You can get more storage by buying songs and music from them, and the storing of Amazon-purchased MP3’s doesn’t count against you.
- This follows closely on their announcement last week of their own Android marketplace.
Amazon started out as bookstore online, but they have expanded to selling almost anything that can actually be shipped via UPS or Fedex, and more importantly – electronically.
And in the last few years they’ve moved beyond even that to being a leading player in the cloud space. They have their own digital book platform in the Kindle
. They are knocking on Netflix's door with their own Instant Video offering. Their EC2 platforms are pretty cool – you can basically own a computer out on the cloud for a very reasonable price – probably less than you would spend on purchasing and maintaining a physical box. You can remote into the machine and manage it like it was your very own. You can clone the machines with a click of a button. Pretty powerful stuff. And a pretty compelling, forward thinking business.
I think it is safe to say that Amazon is not fooling around.
Apple and Google both should be looking over their shoulders. Apple should be concerned about Amazon cutting into the iTunes arena, and Google should be feeling the pinch on the cloud computing side of things. Amazon is coming strong into their space.
Okay, so here is the conclusion I promised: One of Embarcadero’s end-game plans for AppWave is to get bought by Amazon.
Amazon is the only one of the players in this space not tied to their own OS, and thus can be the one that provides an AppStore for Windows. (Google is OS neutral at best, but obviously interested in promoting Android and ChromeOS, and Apple, well, they are Apple, aren’t they.) AppWave theoretically could be something that launches Embarcadero into the big-time, but it’s also something that the big-time players could very well want to buy.
And of course, one has to believe that Microsoft won’t be silent in all of this.
Thoughts?