October 12, 2012 at 11:44AppSurfer: YouTube for Android Applications
Amazon's Appstore for Android has long been offering users to test applications in a browser before buying, and a new startup that launches today is ready to offer this alternative. AppSurfer, as it is called, plays on a wider field - he wants to become YouTube for Android Applications. Whether the company will be able to realize this idea is still unknown, but the very idea of offering applications in a browser - with the ability to try, test, share, paste code on an arbitrary site - seems very interesting.
The Indian startup so far, at the time of its launch, has only 50 applications, and most of them are from local publishers. Pay attention to the fact that the system is so far focused on developers, and not on users, so the company still has time to improve the site, which definitely requires some improvements, and then it may well become YouTube for Android. The startup says that the release for users will include a separate Android application for searching applications and it will take place within two months - after expanding the catalog of the offered programs.
According to co-founder Aniket Avati, the team’s first idea was to make AppSurfer as a developer tool that can be used for testing and private display of applications - something like Pieceable for Android. “After four or five months of development, we realized that this idea can find the best application in the consumer market for testing the application before buying,” he says. “The ability to let users try the Android app outside the platform and device gives us access to a much wider market, so we changed our idea.”
The same idea is inspired, for example, by BlueStacks, which releases a player for Android applications for Mac and PC. Instead of desktop software, AppSurfer relies on the web.
On the competition with Amazon, Avati says that the “try-before-you-buy” functionality in Amazon applies only to applications from the store, and the store itself is not available in many countries. “AppSurfer is an open platform that wants to promote applications everywhere on the Web - on blogs, developer pages, social networks,” he says. “And then we will already direct users to the page on Google Play to download the application.”
In addition, AppSurfer is implemented on HTML5, which allows it to work on smartphones, tablets and computers. Plus, like YouTube, it gives developers a link to their application in the system and the ability to embed a widget in a page - this is how it looks .
The company has been conducting closed beta tests since March and, on average, the number of clicks on the Google Play page reaches 15%.
You can register for the test here: http://publisher.appsurfer.com/app_publishers/sign_in#signup
The Indian startup so far, at the time of its launch, has only 50 applications, and most of them are from local publishers. Pay attention to the fact that the system is so far focused on developers, and not on users, so the company still has time to improve the site, which definitely requires some improvements, and then it may well become YouTube for Android. The startup says that the release for users will include a separate Android application for searching applications and it will take place within two months - after expanding the catalog of the offered programs.
According to co-founder Aniket Avati, the team’s first idea was to make AppSurfer as a developer tool that can be used for testing and private display of applications - something like Pieceable for Android. “After four or five months of development, we realized that this idea can find the best application in the consumer market for testing the application before buying,” he says. “The ability to let users try the Android app outside the platform and device gives us access to a much wider market, so we changed our idea.”
The same idea is inspired, for example, by BlueStacks, which releases a player for Android applications for Mac and PC. Instead of desktop software, AppSurfer relies on the web.
On the competition with Amazon, Avati says that the “try-before-you-buy” functionality in Amazon applies only to applications from the store, and the store itself is not available in many countries. “AppSurfer is an open platform that wants to promote applications everywhere on the Web - on blogs, developer pages, social networks,” he says. “And then we will already direct users to the page on Google Play to download the application.”
In addition, AppSurfer is implemented on HTML5, which allows it to work on smartphones, tablets and computers. Plus, like YouTube, it gives developers a link to their application in the system and the ability to embed a widget in a page - this is how it looks .
The company has been conducting closed beta tests since March and, on average, the number of clicks on the Google Play page reaches 15%.
You can register for the test here: http://publisher.appsurfer.com/app_publishers/sign_in#signup