Digium launches 'app store' for Asterisk

Ever since Apple adapted their wildly successfull iTunes music store to sell apps for the iPhone, technology vendors everywhere have been trying to find opportunities to replicate the innovation. Now Digium is launching AsteriskExchange--while not quite a true app store--it's a marketplace and reviews site for Asterisk's open source community.

The website will serve as a hub for the Asterisk open-source VoIP community including a place for users to review applications and phones. Developers can get exposure for their Asterisk-based applications and users can get the purchase info right from the site. At the moment it looks like AsteriskExchange is not actually doing any selling itself, but instead directs users to vendor sites who sell the products. The site has a number of tabs including a 'most popular' tab. Currently, the Bria softphone app is at the top of the list, but with no reviews or star ratings yet, I am not sure how they are determining the popularity. It will be interesting in the future to see what apps end up the top of the list when more users access the site.

Unlike other app stores, AsteriskExchange also includes some hardware that you can learn about, review, and connect to sellers to get your equipement. Clicking on the Snom 360 deskphone will bring to an info page and an offsite link to 'Buy Now.'

For more:
- read this article [1] from Connected Planet

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