Windows Marketplace for Mobile

Is this too little too late from Microsoft? As mentioned previously Apple’s iPhone App Store managed to reach a massive one billion downloaded applications last month, yet Microsoft have only recently started to generate interest around their own upcoming application store.

Last week the Windows Marketplace for Mobile (think App Store for Windows Mobile) was given some public exposure through the Windows Mobile Blog in the form of a ‘Race to Market Challenge ’. The challenge enables developers to submit applications to the Marketplace for the chance to win up to four Microsoft Surface tables (developer editions). Not only that but the winning applications would receive online marketing and promotion from Microsoft for coming out on top of this challenge. Will this be enough to pull some of the mobile developer community away from the current iPhone market and kick start the Windows Marketplace for Mobile? Or have Microsoft left it too late with Apple’s billion download head start?

Dr Neil had some comments of his own regarding the Windows Marketplace for Mobile.

“Windows mobile has had an open marketplace for a number of years now, in the form of online stores such as Handango . It is curious to me why Microsoft would not support the growth of these stores in order to further push out the Windows Mobile platform as opposed to simply trying to copy the Apple model. It all feels very reactionary, rather than ordered thinking. Handango (and others like it) have built up a large catalog of mobile applications to support the Windows Mobile platform and it would seem like a smart thing to do would be to work with this. What Microsoft is doing with the Windows Marketplace for Mobile is likely to work against the online stores that have supported Windows Mobile application sales so far.”

Here at nsquared we develop applications for a wide range of technologies including Windows Mobile, iPhone and Microsoft Surface. If you have an application idea that you want brought to life then contact us and we can help make that a reality!