Microsoft’s app store, Marketplace, still thin on apps
Rating: Apple won’t be quaking in its boots
It’s been almost two months since Microsoft effectively introduced its ‘Marketplace’ mobile apps store with the launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 (Windows Phone). A quick trawl through the store shows it’s still got less than 400 apps. So it doesn’t pose much of a threat to Apple, then.
The Marketplace app is standard for Windows 6.5 phones but those with Windows 6.0 or 6.1 handsets can download it here or do so by pointing their handset’s browser at mp.windowsphone.com.
The trait which strikes you most about Marketplace is that the majority of the apps appear to be free. Some are genuinely free while others are 30 day trials.
There appear to be three common price points on the Marketplace store: - 99 cents; $2.99; and $9.99. Plus the only payment option seems to be in US dollars.
Worse still, the store seems to only accepts payment by credit card (American Express/Mastercard/Visa). The lack of a PRS capability to purchase via premium rate SMS is a major omission. Especially for sums as low as 99 cents.
Searching the site by category revealed another unsurprising statistic. Out of a total of 380 apps (by our reckoning), a total of 118 of these programs were actually games.
Browsing the site via the ‘Most Popular’ category revealed that it isn’t until you reach the Number 17 slot that you find a paid-for app. And it’s a puzzle game called Meon from Manbolo.
The majority of the popular apps are providing (mostly for free) the kind of capabilities you’d expect a half decent smartphone to possess in the first place. Such as access to MySpace, Facebook and Twitter.
There’s hope for Windows Mobile apps developers, yet, as one of the most popular apps appears to be WunderRadio from Jeyo . This costs the full $9.99 and judging by the glowing reviews, it is worth every cent.
The app providers the user with access to global streamed radio stations and there appear to be at least 400 hundred of them identified by WunderRadio.
One 30-day trial app GoMo News downloaded was LocateMe from Applied PDA Software. It enables users to send their current location to other people via SMS or email.
This was the first application GoMo News found for the TMN Bluebelt II (Windows 6.5) handset kindly loaned to us by ZTE, that finally proved the handset did possess an inbuilt GPS capability.
It sent out a highly accurate fix (within 20 houses) of GoMo News’ current location and made it very easy to look this up via Google Maps.
This investigation was inspired by recent remarks made by GetJar’s CEO, Ilja Laurs, that 90 per cent of mobile app stores would fail. Given the clout that Microsoft possesses, Marketplace looks like it may become one of the victims.
Microsoft’s Marketplace for Mobile is a ghost town. The developers have already abandoned Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform. Compared to other mobile platforms (eg Android / iPhone), there are embarrassingly few apps being developed for Windows Mobile. You can almost see the tumbleweed rolling across the Mobile Marketplace.
The platform has already died. That happened when the developers walked out. There is zero chance of those developers coming back. Therefore, we can safely say that there’s no chance of Windows Mobile’s long term survival. Gartner says it will be gone within the next year.
Although Microsoft, by their own admission, failed in the mobile market over the past few years, to write them entirely off is nonsense. Windows Mobile 7 is designed to be on par with the iPhone if not better - at least from a UI perspective. Under the hood though, Microsoft’s technology and marketing goals are far better than Apple. For starters, Microsoft does not own 30% of a developers revenue. They own nothing. Second, apps designed to run on WinMo will run on all kinds of phones, unlike apps for the iPhone. The iPhone is a fad. Get over it. Non of Apple’s competitors are just going to sit by and let Apple gobble up the market without fighting back. Any developer who throws in the towel on Microsoft is either developing the wrong types of apps or is living on thrill. Any sound business doing software development doesn’t invest their money in a phone or even an operating system. They invest in an application that has a purpose and sells. End users couldn’t really give a hoot if it’s an iPhone or Windows device. It’s whether an app exists to do the job they want, is user friendly and priced right.