I can’t believe it’s already been over a month since Elements. I woke up mid-October with the vestiges of some kind of terrible and wonderful dream. Well, really I assumed it was a dream because it involved taking on a minor role in a circus performance, and that just didn’t sound right. However I’ve now been reassured that no, in fact it *wasn’t* a dream. I performed (a very minor role) in a circus, talked about our ramp to 6M users, and promised you that we’d be more transparent about Intel AppUp center moving forward.
So, as promised I’m starting this process with a monthly blog, an AppUp state of the union. We’ll be doing these at a minimum, once a month. We’ll provide you with updates on AppUp, including information on new product releases, new affiliate stores, marketing plans and any outages or technical issues during we encountered. And this is one of the places we’ll chat about your ideas for AppUp.
So – some updates from October:
Product Updates:
We know that selling your apps in just one language gets you to only a part of the total market and doesn’t help you broaden and deepen your reach. Localization of Intel AppUp center and our developer program helps us provide the most relevant localized content in every market. It’s an important part of our strategy. This month I’m happy to say both our German and Spanish Intel AppUp localized sites went live.
In addition a new version of the Intel AppUp center English was released on October 14th to accommodate social functionality and improved features to support app promotions.
Support Incidents:
We had 3 incidents this month. 2 of them are now completely resolved:
Issue one was due to a web service not functioning properly and prevented users from downloading applications. This occurred and was fixed on October 10th with a database server patch.
Issue two wasn’t downtime (yay!) but it did mean some apps weren’t showing in the catalog (boo!) for brief periods on October 12th and 13th. This was fixed with a config setting on the 13th.
We have a remaining issue that’s 98% closed. I hate that this means it’s still 2% open (HATE HATE HATE!), but there you have it:
We call this the Error 108 issue (“Your request could not be completed.”) and it shows up intermittently in the AppUp client. This error was initially specific to fresh installations of the AppUp center and occurred during the initial login process and it’s now limited to just a fraction of those scenarios. Unfortunately it’s a real PITA to reproduce, and as you know those are the absolute worst things to find and fix. We posted a workaround for customers on the support community and a new banner announcement within the AppUp center with a direct link to help people resolve the problem. We think we’re super close to this going away, but it’s not dead yet. We’ll be sure to post when we think we have this one licked.
New users for AppUp:
While we’re spooling up the jump drives for 2012 marketing we’re investing in AppUp marketing initiatives as well as new programs with our affiliate store partners (who we love!). For example in November, we’re rolling out a new campaign with MLW in Indonesia and Dixons in the UK.
We added over 19,000 users since Elements, bringing our total user base to over 400,000.
It’s been a quiet month for users which I attribute pretty much entirely to the phase we’re in. We’ve been focusing heavily on stability and quality (as mentioned above) and an upcoming release with a set of new features (more on that later!) which will help us reach users. Those numbers aren’t nearly as high as I’d like them to be, but we know that, we know why (we’re developing our pipeline and capabilities) and we’re shooting for much better numbers through the holidays and into January. Ultrabook won’t really ramp for us until mid-2012, so I’m definitely looking for better numbers moving into this holiday season but I’m not expecting Ultrabook to effect growth until a little bit further down the road.
That sums up our October for you. We continue to work on three key pieces for the program: Improve user experience, drive AppUp center pre-install distribution, and increase user acquisition through marketing and retail relationships.
I promised you a ticker and a feedback system to help pool your ideas and suggestions, as well as update you on our progress towards acquiring more users for AppUp. We’ll have an update on those things soon. In the meanwhile, please use the comments section on this blog. Thank (again!) for working with us on AppUp. We’re in this together.
Green Belt
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