Thaiware Communication, the operator of Thaiware.com, the largest directory of Thai software, has launched an online market place for Thai software at www.thaisoftwaremarket.com.

The move is a bid to expand market channels for Thai software. It involves the participation of Tarad.com and Avira, along with support from Software Park Thailand.

The concept is to establish www.thaisoftwaremarket.com as an e-market place that assists local software developers to turn to selling their software online, rather than in physical packages. Buyers can log in to the e-market place and buy and download software and applications online.

Thaiware Communication's managing director Chatchawit Krotangkiartkul said yesterday that www.thaisoftwaremarket.com already had 100 Thai software applications available for download. These included freeware such as lite-versions, trial-versions (shareware), and demos, and paid or commercial software that was packaged and downloaded with encryption protection.

He said the aim of the new e-market place was for it to become the single place to buy Thai Software. It offers various payment options, including bank transfer, credit card, debit card, counter service at 7- Eleven, Paypal and Paysbuy. It will benefit both Thai software developers and users, because users will find it a more convenient means of buying trusted software at a trusted website, while developers will have no shipping costs, he said.

"Tarad.com will take care of the payment platform while Avira will make anti-virus checks of software sold at the e-marketplace. Meanwhile, Software Park Thailand will help by inviting software companies to join-in, by collaborating with related IT associations, and by promoting and supporting the project," Chatchawit said.

The launch of the e-market place is the first phase of an overall project that will see the deployment of e-commerce models for marketing and selling Thai software. Early next year will see the start of an app-store model that will offer users upgraded versions of software they have bought. Then, by mid 2012, an advertising system will be deployed that will allow freeware developers to monetize their software.

"Within one month, there will be 300 software applications available at the e-marketplace. Based on Thaiware.com, there are more than 10,000 items on the software list. Around 2,500 of them are Thai software applications and 25 per cent of them are commercial software applications that occur off our site, as Thaiware.com is not a commercial market place. These software suites will be transferred for sale on the e-marketplace," Chatchawit said.

He aims that 30 to 40 per cent of all downloads from www.thaisoftwaremarket.com will involve commercial software. The average price of a commercial software application is Bt800 to Bt900. Software available at www.thaisoftwaremarket.com will include business software, games, developer tools, educational software, Internet tools, and utilities software.

The website Thaiware.com currently records around 80,000 unique IP visitors and it has more than 200,000 members. While this membership and level of traffic give an indication of potential customers, www.thaisoftwaremarket.com is aiming higher than this, Chatchawit said.

Software Park Thailand's director Thanachart Numnonda said the park supported www.thaisoftwaremarket.com because part of the park's mission was to encourage the establishment of an e-marketplace for local software businesses. There are a lot of small- and medium-sized enterprises in Thailand that require software to help them improve their productivity. With this model, SMEs will find it easier to access local software, he said.

"We encourage local software developers to turn to the Internet because of the app-store trend and greater familiarity with software-download methods, so the concept of the e-marketplace for local software has come at the right time," Thanachart said.