Microsoft Shows Off Windows App Store

Microsoft Corp. revealed its Windows 8 App Store yesterday, which can be seen as a potential competitor of Apple's Mac OS X Lion, at a San Francisco event.

The store will be available to end users with the launch of Windows 8 in late 2012. According to various reports the store will feature free as well as paid apps. The store in Windows 8 is in the line with Apple's Mac OS X Lion which has a similar store with integrated apps.

The Windows 8 App Store is a topic of much discussion at present and the biggest concern is whether the App Store will be appealing to the third-party developers which are must for any healthy ecosystem.

The software giant is quite confident that Windows 8 OS will have a broad audience from both consumers as well as business users which will eventually create a considerable market for all apps from games to other enterprise apps, reported eWeek.

The hurdle for Windows 8 OS adoption might be the success of Windows 7 which is moving forward and replacing Windows XP as the most popular operating system in terms of market share worldwide.