Windows app store breaks old ground for Microsoft Microsoft hopes to differentiate its online app store against Apple with the promise of honesty if not better pricing. The company has said it'll charge developers 30 per cent of any revenue made from sales of applications posted to Microsoft's forthcoming Windows Marketplace for Mobile. Also, Microsoft will charge you an …
While $99 is a bit of a hurdle, I can see why they'd want to charge a fee - without it your app store will be swamped with vast tides of pointless or unprofessional software. A modest fee should keep the applicants to those with a serious interest in producing and selling reasonable product.
$99 for a bedroom hacker might be a bit expensive. For small business professionals looking for a cheap outlet for apps with someone else doing all the selling and hopefully a prominent store, $99 isn't all that much.
Better option than trying to promote your little website through Google's ranks or using any of the thousands of pop-up, banner-tastic, malware infesting download sites and hoping to get revenue off adverts (or resorting to adware in your own apps!).
Question is, if you want to offer stuff for free*, do you still have to pay up $99. In fact can you offer open source freeware through the store?
* - as a consumer I like free, as a developer I'd prefer people pay! :-D
Losers! They will never get it will they? Microsoft will always get it just that little bit wrong (5 submissions) due to their greed they will never lead again. Even where they are still in the lead they are losing ground.
Hey Balmer, we don't need your software anymore! We have better places to go (Google, Apple, and more web based co's that I could list) and you are still sat there telling people they still need you while we go to these other friendlier better more polished and dare I say it cooler and more professional vendors.
Jesus, with all the money and resources that MS has, you would think they would come up with something a heck of a lot better than this. Why not take a 25% cut instead of 30% or charge $70 per annum? Make developing for your store *more* attractive than Apple's by *undercutting* them - it isn't as though MS can't afford to do this. Don't just give some bullshit PR-speak about your as yet untested approval process being "more transparent ergo it's much better".
This all looks like a terrible, terrible deal for the developers of WinMo apps from the get go - the same as Apple only much, much worse ($100 a pop after your 5th submission - not app, but submission - is ludicrous money-grubbing greed) instead of much, much better. What a PR disaster already and it isn't even up and running yet.
Honestly, MS is run by a bunch of fucking clueless morons.
I have a windows mobile.
it is much better than an iphone for one very brilliant reason.
I'm not tied to the apple store,
it's not that I hate apple, they make nice products, I bought a windows mobile phone based on what it could do, it's large screen and the fact that I could run other apps on it.
if I want an app, I google for it, find one, either for free or pay a fee for a licence, I connect my phone to my computer and copy the installer to the phone where I run it, (or I can install via activesync), or I can install by downloading straight to the phone.
I don't need some mickey mouse store that is a one stop shop for apps, (and this has already been done on various sites anyway).
Iphone sucks for this one simple reason.
if I get one it's mine, I want to load apps that I want, I don't need some guy at apple to decide if they want to let me use it by putting it in their store so that they can take a cut.
and I don't want to have to "jailbreak" or otherwise "hack" my device possibly voiding a warranty so that I can download an app that I actually want.
in this case MS doesn't need to copy apple, apple needs to copy microsoft and let the users decide what they can put on their phones not vetting everything for them.
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