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Armada

Cross platform, application marketplace

Armada is an attempt to fix the fragmented application distribution landscape.

Evolution of applications

Right now you have platform specific app stores, i.e one for windows, seperate one for android, tertiary one for macs
This made a lot of sense when we built platform specific apps. We had micrsoft office for windows and open office for linux
But the app landscape has changed. It's more product focused and less platform focused. You build the best app for x for all platforms. For example, Evernote or Dropbox. Apps that have to run everywhere.

Evolution of developer tooling

Developer tooling has also come a long way and is making great strides towards cross platform sdks e.g cordova, xamarin, node-webkit, atom-shell etc.As an example two developers with no experience built a mobile application and a desktop application respectively, with a little guidance from me in a single sleep deprived night.

So why force developers to deal with the fragmented application marketplace? It's a breeze to generate a binary for each platform using cloud services but an expensive hassle pushing them to their designated app stores.

Tertiary points:

-> Reviews on websites may be fake, reviews on an app store though fakeable are more likely to be genuine. This prevents consumers from downloading a terrible app with a great website and a lot of fabricated testimonials over a great app with a subpar website.

-> App sync: Often times users get new devices, mobile, laptops, business computers and find themselves needing to re-download a lot of tooling/apps. A truly cross platform marketplace could offer an app syncing feature allowing easy and quick reloading of applications on their new devices. Currently this problem is hacked around using install scripts from random github users.

-> Experimental/semi-complete applications built by developers for their friends (e.g flappy bird, mvps/demos for startups, amateur app developers) can be easily and cheaply shared via this appstore. We want to create a more open and free app store. Spam can be managed by a monetizeable 'verified apps' mechanism for more professional/complete apps.

We present a solution:
Lets push our applications to a single cross platform app store instead.

One app store to rule them all.

Welcome to Armada.

Notes: We managed to compile native desktop application for linux 64bit(kubuntu), windows 64bit(windows 7) and a native mobile app for Android(Kitkat on a samsung gs4 mini). The team currently lacks a mac for compiling for apple platforms. Additionally the app store is not only for cross platform apps, it's for any apps.