Pebble Announces 'Pebble Appstore' is Coming in Early 2014

Pebble has announced preliminary developer access to the upcoming Pebble appstore.

This first step towards launching an official channel for Pebble watchface and app discovery will give Pebble's developer community to prepare their apps for distribution and compatibility with Pebble SDK 2.0.

Pebble appstore will be included in the official Pebble smartphone application and will be the first place where Pebble users look for Pebble apps. The Pebble appstore includes watchfaces and six app categories. Each category will feature a selection of the best apps and new apps:


1. Daily
2. Remotes
3. Sports & Fitness
4. Notifications
5. Tools & Utilities
6. Games

Pebble apps that are integrated with a companion iOS or Android app will be able to include links to the Google Play or the iOS App Stores, helping users discover those apps. Developers of iOS or Android apps that independently leverage Pebble's Sports API will be allowed to add Pebble appstore entries that link to their native apps.

Submitting applications to the Pebble appstore is free and open to all developers. To get started, developers can create an account on their developer portal and review the Publish to Pebble appstore Guide.

Migration
When SDK 2.0 was originally announced, Developers were notified that apps built for SDK 1.x will be incompatible with Pebble when its firmware is updated to support SDK 2.0 apps. To facilitate the migration for users, Pebble's system will automatically upgrade existing Pebble apps on a user’s Pebble when upgrading to the new firmware. Developers who want to take advantage of this migration feature must port their new app to SDK 2.0, submit the 2.0 app to the Pebble appstore, and register their 1.x UUID in their new appstore profile.


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