Lenovo has officially become the second major PC OEM (after Acer) to join forces with Sweetlabs and their Pokki Suite.
SweetLabs announced the deal today and indicated that Lenovo will be preloading a Start Button/Start Menu from SweetLabs on new PCs it ships worldwide, starting with its Windows 8 consumer laptops and PCs.
In addition to including the SweetLabs “modern Start menu” on its PCs, Lenovo also will be preloading the rest of SweetLabs’ Pokki suite, which includes its app store and game arcade.
Lenovo will start preloading Pokki on its Idea line (IdeaPad, IdeaCentre) of products, starting in “the next couple of weeks,” SweetLabs officials said. It is expected that some Lenovo ThinkPads also will be preloaded with Pokki at a later, unspecified date.
Not surprisingly, SweetLabs execs said plans call for a ramp up “once Windows 8.1 is out this holiday season.”
SweetLabs also announced today that the OEM version of Pokki is now supporting distribution of multiple app types, plus support for 13 languages, including German, Portuguese and Russian.
The Pokki app store provides users with the ability to download traditional PC desktop apps; Web and social apps, like Facebook and Gmail; “unique” Pokki-specific versions of apps like Instagram and a Twitter desktop app known as Tweeki; as well as Windows Store/Metro-Style apps.
I had a chance to speak with some of the senior management at Pokki today and will post more on that later.
Pretty awesome.
