The Pebble appstore goes live on Monday; here’s a first look

Pebble is finally launching its application marketplace, the Pebble appstore. The big day of days is Monday.

The appstore is a smartphone application — Inception! — that shows various apps in a range of categories such as fitness, remotes, notifications, and games.

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“The appstore will live within the existing Pebble app on your iOS or Android device, so you can find and download Pebble apps directly from your smartphone,” reads the company announcement.

Until now, Pebblers found apps and watchfaces thanks to wonderful third-party resources like MyPebbleFaces. In fact, 3 million apps and watchfaces have been downloaded so far. …

Pebble apps have gotten some spit and polish across the board over the past few months thanks to a beefed up SDK and a wider range of iOS 7 notification options.

And during the insanity of CES, Pebble announced a totally new look and feel for its hardware. Pebble Steel is a sleek, serious, downright butch Pebble that swaps out plastic and bright colors for brushed metal and black-matte finishes.

Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky told VentureBeat that the Pebble Steel was born out of simple reality: As much as geeks love the original Pebble, the device just isn’t fit for mainstream consumption. It’s too lightweight, too colorful.

“The aesthetics just weren’t there. We treated that as a design problem,” he said.

Between the Steel and the appstore, we’re starting to see a more grown-up smartwatch emerge from the original little-hardware-company-that-could.