Develop Liverpool: Intel bullish on the potential exploding around Atom hardware and its AppUp store

With most PC OEMs looking to set up their app stores, chip giant Intel is looking to build and expand the wider industry with its own AppUp store.

Supporting apps and games for all hardware using its Atom chips, this is a sector ranging from netbooks, to portable devices, tablets, smart TVs, and in-car systems.

Significantly, OEMs can reskin the store with their own branding if they want to use it themselves.

Just out of beta, there are already 1,400 apps and games available on the nascent store, including Valve's Half Life 2 Mobile Mob.

A big marketing push is expected for AppUp in 2011.

"There's a new economy exploding around Atom-based devices," said Khan Basher, an Intel community manager, who was speaking about the process of creating games for netbooks at the Develop Liverpool conference

"You should have confidence that Intel will win in these growth areas," he added, pointing out that the netbook sector is growing faster than iPhone, DS, PSP or consoles at a similar stage in its lifestyle.

"It's predicted that by 2013, there will be 139 million netbooks globally," he said.

Obviously, this provides a great opportunity for developers to monetise via Intel's AppUp store.

AppUp enables developers to set their own prices for apps and games, under the standard 70:30 split.

Registration for the development program will cost $99 per year, but is currently free for early adopters.

Intel provides tools including SDK, emulators, performance analyers and compilers, so you can build and test your apps. It also handles validation, licensing, billing and distribution tasks.

You can find out more information from Intel's AppUp developer support site.