Windows 8 will have its own app store

Microsoft

The next version of Microsoft's operating system, Windows 8, will include an app store so that software can be downloaded directly from the online store to the computer.

Microsoft follows Apple's lead by doing this; Apple started its Mac App Store last January, and has showcased it as being the main way to buy its new operating system, OS X Lion.

While word has been that the app store direction was where Microsoft was headed, a recent posting on the company's own blog confirmed it, with an ever-so-slight, but significant, inclusion of it in a long list of working Windows 8 groups. (Msnbc.com is a Microsoft-NBC Universal joint venture.)

As one of our colleagues noted last spring, another website "beat Microsoft to the punch with its own Windows app store, Allmyapps.com," which "announced that it has attracted 100,000 users in just three months."

There's no set release date for Windows 8 yet, but that will give Microsoft time to square away the name for its app store. While the blog lists it as App Store, capital "a," capital "s," it's treading on a sore spot with Apple, which has applied to trademark "App Store."

Microsoft has filed a legal challenge with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, saying "the combined term 'app store' is commonly used in the trade, by the general press, by consumers, by Apple’s competitors and even by Apple’s founder and CEO Steve Jobs, as the generic name for online stores featuring apps."

The Redmond company calls its Windows Phone app store the Windows Marketplace, which sounds more like a place to buy fish and fruit. But if it doesn't stick with "app store," there could be another name available with the demise of HP/Palm's webOS: "App Catalog."

— Via Tech Crunch

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