Pebble launching its own app store early next year

Pebble will launch an app store for its smartwatch early next year, offering a central location where users can find and install new watchfaces and third-party software. The “appstore” (Pebble is following Amazon’s lead in condensing it to one word) will launch in early 2014 and be directly integrated with the main Pebble app already available on iOS and Android. It will be broken up into seven categories: daily, remotes, games, notifications, tools & utilities, sports & fitness, and watchfaces. Paid apps won’t be supported at launch, meaning everything you download from the Pebble app store will be free. But developers have the option of charging for a companion iOS or Android app (assuming one is necessary) in the App Store or Google Play as they normally would.

Developers can begin submitting Pebble apps starting today; the company doesn’t plan to review or prevalidate apps before they reach consumers — though software that violates Pebble’s service terms will be removed from the store. Pebble also notes that it will continue to allow app installations from third-party websites, calling out MyPebbleFaces.com as a popular example. “We hope to serve the needs of the majority of our users and look forward to new ideas being implemented by the community in third-party services,” the company says. Pebble’s smartwatch has already proven itself to be an incredibly useful tool, and a proper app store will only help to advance the company’s mission.