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Windows Mobile Marketplace Concerns

Posted by Chris Leckness on March 25, 2009 – 9:16 am  Share
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Long Zheng over at iStartedsomething has a wonderful commentary up regarding issues with the Windows Mobile Marketplace that Frank (Ctitanic) was complaining about a couple weeks ago.

Following the confirmation that developers submitting free applications are not given exceptions to the cost of submission, I’ve also received word from Microsoft “application updates will count as new application submissions, and therefore will count towards the first 5 free submissions, or will cost $99 each after the that”. That is, every new binary is treated as a new application.

Update: I’ve also learnt that Microsoft will charge developers for resubmitting applications if their prior submissions was rejected.

wmmarketplace

Now don’t get me wrong, I would love to see this succeed, but I am not very optimistic based on what we have seen thus far. Microsoft needs to be kissing the small to medium developers asses in hopes that they will continue to develop for a platform that many are losing faith in, not charging a $99 BS fee. I can see the fee if it were a 1 time fee to help keep some garbage out, but this “5 free submissions” is bad news.

What do you think? Should Microsoft be charging the 99 bones in the 1st place or should they be doing all they can to save all the faithful WM Developers from jumping ship alltogether? I do realize $99 is not that much to spend, but it’s the principle to be honest.

Source: iStartedsomething

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Chris Leckness (3547 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Chris Leckness is the Owner/Administrator of Mobilitysite. He is a Microsoft MVP, Mobile Devices and a member of the exclusive focus group, Mobius. Chris runs a Mobilitysite, GotZune, and a few other smaller sites and blogs. His personal blog is chris.leckness.com.


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  • The sales of software should be where Microsoft gets the money, not the evaluation process. I think charging for upgrades and resubmissions is excessive.

    That said, I think I understand why they're doing that. If Microsoft is actually certifying the programs (similar to their other logo programs), they have to do significant testing of the app, probably on several different devices. It's not much cheaper to do that same testing again for an upgrade or resubmission.

    Maybe they should have levels of developer support. $100 gets 5 app submissions, $200 gets 20, $500 gets 75, etc. Or maybe Microsoft could take the fees out of sales until the fee is covered (similar to how record companies and book publishers cover advances, I believe).

    Microsoft should be wooing developers, especially now, and focus on getting customers to buy apps through the app store.

    Of course, at least with Windows Mobile you have many options for selling your software -- your own site, Handango/Pocket Gear/Mobihand/etc. -- so you don't need Microsoft.

    Steve
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