Forbes is reporting that there have been 40,000 downloads of the Apollo runtime since Adobe opened the public alpha on the 19th of March. In addition, there were 30,000 downloads of the SDK, the software to actually create Apollo applications. That’s a pretty astounding number for alpha software. Clearly the buzz around Apollo resulted in a lot of people more than willing to put alpha software on their computer. And the development ecosystem has been humming along as well, with people like Lee Brimelow deploying Apollo applications at a breakneck pace.
There are still a lot of questions about Apollo and where it fits into the ecosystem of the web. Mike Chambers has a long post about just that topic, and it's worth a read. The Forbes article goes into detail on some of the items covered at today's Adobe Analyst summit. There are a lot of questions about how Adobe is going to monetize Apollo. In the short term, I don't think they will or need to, penetration is the name of the game. In the long term however, Apollo plays an important part in growing revenue. Everything from tools to actually using Apollo to deploy applications will add to the bottom line. Perhaps the most lucrative boost may come in the server market, for things like LiveCycle Data Services, as people deploy Apollo applications and look to enhance how they connect. Thanks to JD for the tip.