Croma Launches an App Store for Netbooks

Infiniti Retail, a subsidiary of Tata Sons Ltd has launched the Croma application store. The store will contain thousands of free and paid applications for Intel Atom powered netbooks. The applications will cover a range of categories including social networking, entertainment, gaming and productivity. The store is called 'Croma Apps', is quite like Apple's App Store and is powered by Intel AppUp center.

Croma will pre-install the Croma Apps client on all the netbooks and Croma pen drives retailed at their stores. Existing netbook users can also download these free and paid applications by visiting Croma’s website and downloading the Croma Apps client.

This is India's first entry into application retailing. According to R. Sivakumar, Managing Director-Sales & Marketing Group, Intel South Asia, the local developer community has shown a great interest in having their applications up in Croma Apps, particularly in relation to India-centric applications. Having localized content on netbooks seems to be the feather in the cap in this venture and is potentially the first rival to Apple's App Store for Macbooks. The platform is compatible with Windows 7 Starter Edition, Windows 7 Home Basic, Windows 7 Home Premium, and Windows XP SP 3 with .NET 3.5 Service Pack 1, therefore being the only non game-centric app store for Windows based PCs.