Todd Brix, the Senior Director of the Windows Phone Marketplace, recently spoke about the expansion and improvement of the Marketplace which will allow Windows Phone to grab more mobile marketshare and allow developers to better manage, update and distribute their apps and games.
Microsoft, in recent news, launched their first HTC Windows Phone 7.5 device for India and announced new devices that will be available from Samsung. And now the Windows Phone Marketplace for apps and games is now available for consumers in India and developers from China can now access the App Hub to submit their applications. This represents a great opportunity for developers who want to create and sell their mobile applications for the Windows Phone platform.
In the windows developers blog, Todd Brix, Senior Director of the Windows Phone Marketplace, talked about the expansion of the Windows Phone marketplace in India as well the availability of the App Hub in China and he wrote “developers in China can now register via App Hub and begin submitting apps for availability in any of our supported Marketplace countries. This opens up the Windows Phone opportunity to the tens-of-thousands of talented and creative developers in China. We’ll continue working to bring Marketplace and App Hub to even more markets. We offer the Global Publisher Program in major markets around the world, giving developers in those countries access to Marketplace via local intermediaries.”
This is great news for developers living in China and for consumers living in India.
Marketplace Improvement
Brix also talked about some of the improvement in for the Windows Phone Marketplace which will make it easier for consumers to find apps and games, and help developers to make their applications more discoverable, that under a new “published guideline.”
He wrote that “A customer’s ability to search for an app and quickly find what she or he is looking for is a core characteristic of an efficient Marketplace. To further improve the Marketplace shopping and download experience, we have started enforcing the published guideline of 5 keywords per application.”
Developers should be using these guidelines to make it easier for consumers to find the apps that they are looking for with no more than 5 keywords although developers are allowed to use more keywords to describe their applications.
Windows phone Apps updates
In regards to the Marketplace, some improvements also have been make to make easier for developers to update, manage and make available the different versions of their apps.
Brix wrote that “developers who have updated their Windows Phone 7.0 applications to Windows Phone 7.5 (aka Mango) have new options for how they manage updates for both apps. The 7.0 and 7.5 versions of an application share the same catalog details and pricing (including trial and geographic distribution option, rating & reviews and hidden/live property if in a published state).”
This will definitely help developers who already submitted apps for the first release of Windows Phone as well as an updated version of their apps for the the Windows Phone 7.5
