Acer's "Alive" Digital Content Platform: A New App Store Emerges

Is there room in the world for another app store? App stores seem to be emerging at a record pace these days. On the smartphone, there's the Android Market, Apple App Store, BlackBerry App World and a few others from LG, etc. Even Apple is introducing a Mac App Store in their next major OS revision, and Intel's AppUp netbook market will soon deliver apps to smaller, less powerful machines. It's clear that apps are the wave of the future, and Acer is hoping to get a piece of the pie before it's too late.

Along with a number of hardware introductions today, Acer also revealed an "Alive" content delivery system, which is basically a souped-up app store. Acer will populate it with apps from a number of different content partners, and users will be kept abreast of new apps via Twitter streams or notifications in their "Channels." There's also a social networking slant to all of this, allowing users to share and see what content their friends have been into.


Alive will include five major portals: Listen (for music and audiobooks), Watch (for movies, TV, etc.), Read (for e-books), Play (games) and Applications (everything else). Much like Steam, customers will be able to keep a running list of their purchased digital goods in a Library section, and both free/paid content will be available.

Alive is expected to eventually be installed on all Acer machines, with Italy and the UK to get the system first. Beyond that, it will roll out to other countries beginning in early 2011 across all Acer's consumer devices worldwide, including netbooks, notebooks, smartphones and tablets.

Alive

Discover and enjoy digital content with the Acer Group

New York, November 23rd 2010 - alive is the brand-new platform for Acer Group customers to fulfill their daily needs for relevant digital content discovery and consumption, across all devices and across all operating systems.

It is a unique starting point for users, allowing them to browse, search, access, purchase, stream or download and play any type of digital content.

alive is much more than a traditional content store, as a large breadth of free and paid content is presented to users via real-time feeds directly managed by content providers. Content updates are as instant and discoverable as Twitter feeds, allowing users to be regularly notified when there's something new and interesting for them to discover.

alive is the Acer Group's next generation store where Content Providers can plug in and publish their content directly to Acer Group users, who will then find an extensive offer of both global and local content.

alive is personal. Users can fine tune their preferences and leverage a sophisticated recommendation system that shows content relevant to them. Instead of surfing across a myriad of web sites and online services to get what they want, alive will help users by proposing what they might find relevant.

Content discovery is enhanced via the innovative Channel concept: users can browse, select, subscribe and then follow all their favorite alive Channels, which are related to specific themes, like for example music artists, movie genres, top games, book authors, etc. Content Providers will be able to offer a vast array of Channels, finding new and innovative ways to present their content, differently from what they do via a web site or via a traditional service.

alive addresses five key usages to embrace the whole digital universe:
- in the Listen section alive will offer music, audiobooks, radios, podcasts and other types of audio entertainment content
- in the Watch area alive will provide movies, TV series, TV Channels, video podcasts and other types of short videos, like Music videos
- in the Read section alive will deliver e-books, e-magazines and e-newspapers as well as single news, articles and blogs
- in the Play area alive users will be able to find games of any kind
- in the Application section alive will offer all the most common application categories, like Business & Finance, Lifestyle & Leisure, Learning, Travel & Navigation, Productivity, etc.

alive is social. Users will be able to post and share reviews and comments about the content they like in one click thanks to a direct interface with all the most popular social networks in each geography.

Customers can keep all their content purchase history in their MyLibrary section and share them across different Acer Group devices.

The unique alive interface will be pre-installed on all new devices or will be downloadable online by existing Acer Group customers and it will offer a unique user experience customized by device type.

Purchase of premium content or subscription to premium channels will be easy and in one-click. Users only need to create a unique account on alive and register their credit card details only once.

Starting from the initial version available to selected users in UK and Italy in December, alive will then be rolled-out in the first quarter of 2011 and made available progressively across all Acer's consumer devices worldwide, including netbooks, notebooks, smartphones and tablets.