There is a new entrant into the mobile component app store market. Chupa, an Italy-based startup, has released its mobile component store out of private beta and it includes tools for native and mobile Web application development with support for some of the major development frameworks.
Chupa follows in the footsteps of Appcelerator, which released a mobile component store in September. It remains to be seen if Chupa will have the kind of developer clout that Appcelerator has achieved with a base of over 1.5 million. Take a look at Chupa’s offerings and let us know in the comments if its model works for your development needs.
Chupa will support the most popular frameworks including JQuery, Appcelerator Titanium, Sencha Touch and PhoneGap. Developers can sell their own tools or buy from the market. The store includes a variety of topics and tools, such as news readers, video and audio players and galleries, user interface elements and custom controls. More appropriately, that is the plan. Browsing through Chupa’s selection there is actually little in the market itself. Perhaps the sub-categories it has listed are wishful thinking, waiting for developers to fill up the store.
That is in contrast to another component store, Verious, which sells to the same categories of development tools but has a much wider variety. Appcelerator started its Open Mobile Marketplace with 50 tools though plans rapid expansion.
Chupa left private beta last week but has not outlined exactly what its direction is going to be. According to TechCrunch, Chupa took a 20% commission during private beta from sales in its market. Appcelerator uses the industry application standard 30%.
These mobile component stores are still in nascent stages. Appcelerator, by virtue of its Titanium platform and its large developer network, probably has the early lead out of the gate. Developers may still be looking towards sources like GitHub to get their code though there is room for growth for at least one of these component stores, perhaps all three.
What do you think about the mobile component store model? Can it be as successful the Salesforce AppExchange model? Let us know in the comments.
