Acer Alive: Next-Generation Store, Focuses on Real-Time

While hardware is one thing, and even focusing on media sharing is another, Acer wasn't done until they managed to cover pretty much every interesting market there is to cover this morning. While still on stage, Acer managed to also unveil their brand new, next-generation digital storefront. Luckily enough, this one doesn't have the word "market" or "store" in the title. However, Acer's Alive may be unique enough to catch someone's attention, somewhere. The store, while similar in the content that it delivers, was created to make you feel like it is alive, as Acer wants it to focus on real-time interaction with the user.

That's what Acer believes is the one, major difference between their new store, and everyone else's. They noted that going into a store, finding what you want, and then getting recommendations for what you might like is something akin to "the Old Times," and that the feature is no longer present in the way that they would like it to be. They mean, of course, real-time. That way, as you are browsing through any one category, as Alive will feature categories for content, you'll be treated to recommendations. Therefore, as Acer mentions, the more you use Alive, the better your recommendations, and the general user experience, will become.

Acer managed to wrangle plenty of content providers and partners for Alive, making sure that when it does launch in the near future, there's plenty of items in the store for people to buy. Acetrax is one of those companies, providing videos and movies. And, all of your purchases are stored in the cloud as meta-data, so you can watch it whenever, wherever you want after you purchase it. At launch, Acer says there will be 15,000 music videos, 2,000 movies from "top Hollywood studios," and thousands of eBooks, and other reading material like newspapers, ready to go. There will also be thousands of casual games.

As far launch dates go, Acer confirmed that Alive will be launching in the United Kingdom first, beginning December 20th. On that same date, it will also launch in Italy. It will then launch in several Asian, European, and in the Americas by the end of the second quarter, 2011. They will have cross-platform and cross-device optimization ready to go by the end of the first quarter, 2011.