Microsoft Marketplace for Mobile app store unveiled

MWC 2009: Buy apps on your Windows Phone

16 February 2009 10:46 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Microsoft has confirmed it is entering the app store arena with its own version for Windows Phone users.

Called Marketplace for Mobile, even though the company is trying to ditch the mobile branding within its Windows Phone offering, the application store will offer users of the new 6.5 OS a simple way of getting applications on to their phone.

"We currently have 20,000 applications available for Windows Mobile devices", said James Blamey, group product manager for Microsoft Mobile Communications Business told Pocket-lint. "It would be good to get that choice to phone users easily".

Although sketchy about how Microsoft would take its cut, Blamey confirmed that it would be looking at how the competition ran their business models.

Currently Apple charges developers a flat $100 to be part of the process and then takes a 30% cut of the sales thereafter.

When asked what applications we could expect to see on Windows Phone, Blamey said that it would be the usual array of games, productivity suites and fun apps but that gaming was likely to play a big part.

"Currently two-thirds of the 20,000 applications are games", Blamey confirmed.

With handsets like the new Qualcomm Snapdragon-powered Toshiba TG01, you can see why games developers will see the appeal of an application store for the estimated 18 million Windows Phone users out there.

Microsoft has yet to confirm a date for the official opening of the Marketplace for Mobile app store, however told us that users should be able to buy their apps in time for Christmas 2009 around the same time version 6.5 handsets will be hitting the stores.

Full tags

Phones, Apps, Microsoft, MWC2009