Will $99 Keep the Microsoft App Store Fartless?
Microsoft outed developer details for its Windows Mobile application store this morning. Much like Apple’s, developers will earn 70 percent of the proceeds earned from selling software. Redmond is charging $99 annually for the developer program and each software submission will cost an additional $99, although the annual fee includes five free submissions.
My immediate reaction saw this as a pricey barrier-to-entry for the smaller developers. As I think it through however, I’m really hoping this strategy will help maintain the quality level for software. Without a per-title submission price, we’re sure to see any number of fart apps and tip calculators. 
Microsoft says that the venerable Windows Mobile platform has “20,000 applications already in market” while I’ve read that Apple has over 25,000 in about a year. I’m interested in looking at those numbers in a year’s time… and also including Palm, RIM and Google in the mix as well.
Apple already charges $99/year for their developer program, and I doubt a lot of developers have submitted more than five apps. So I doubt this alone will mean a substantial change in the quality of submissions. More consequential may be that fewer people will see an equivalent “gold rush” opportunity for Windows Mobile apps.
Ditto on the random guy. You may want to start thinking about taking gingko, Kev. ;P
Hmmm… I must have misunderstood my free membership in the ADC program. I suppose it’s limited and that I can’t develop or submit iPhone apps?
Update: I did. Thanks to both of you for the heads up. I didn’t realize that the ADC membership is an umbrella program and that Apple has a specific $99 individual and/or $299 enterprise iPhone development fee. In that case: beware of the fart apps!
So will next x miss will people be giving out windows mobile gift cards to use in their store. I pray these apps will use active sync to install / buy. I would rather die than use windows media player or Zune software to install or buy anything.
Actually what everyone is forgetting is that to develop for Windows Mobile you really need to shell out $3K for the tools and MSDN subscription to understand how to use the arcane toolkit to write a mobile app. Then spend six months at whom knows how much $$$ per month reading MSDN and tinkering with the dev tools.
By the time Microsoft taps you in the back of the head for $99 you will be feeling no pain what-so-ever.
Apple charges as little as $1K for the developer tools and they throw in a computer on the deal.
As someone who uses MS’s tools on an almost daily basis (including MSDN) I can’t fathom someone calling them arcane. MS’s tools are so good they cripple my ability to code for anything but Windows.