Pebble’s Official App Store Will Go Live In Early 2014

Pebble have announced that the official app store for the Pebble Smartwatch will go live along with the new SDK in early 2014. Up until now Pebble smartwatch owners had been relying on third party stores like MyPebbleFaces but with the official app store they can have access to all the smartwatch apps in one place. The Pebble App Store will be available on the official Pebble smartphone application. There shall be 6 app categories - Daily, Remotes, Sports & Fitness, Notifications, Tools & Utilities and Games and a separate section for Pebble watchfaces. Since many Pebble apps depend on smartphone apps, developers have the option of adding the Google Play Store and Apple App Store links of the corresponding companion app.


The #-Link-Snipped-# has warned developers that Pebble 1.x apps will not work on the 2.0 firmware. Developers will have to port their existing apps using the 2.0 SDK. This is being done so that existing apps on a user’s Pebble get updated automatically when the user migrates to the new firmware. Newbies can sign up for the developer portal for free. Pebble is not going to pre-validate the apps like other app stores but if it finds that any app does not conform to the Pebble appstore Developer Agreement it reserves the right to take down that app. Developers will not be able to assign a price tag to their apps since the Peeble app store will not support paid apps initially but earning money isn’t going to be difficult as the developers can charge for the companion smartphone apps. Third party app stores will still be able to provide apps to users as Pebble isn’t going to block installation of applications by those websites on the 2.0 firmware.