Microsoft Opens Its Answer to the Apple App Store
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Microsoft launches a Windows Marketplace for Mobile portal, and plans to include an application marketplace on Windows Mobile 6.5 devices. Nokia, with its own application store, Ovi, set to launch in May, is also poised for a piece of this growing market. Like Microsoft's marketplace, Nokia's Ovi will compete against Apple's highly successful Apple App Store.
Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile
portal is now live.
At the Mobile World Congress in February, Microsoft CEO
Steve Ballmer announced the portal that he said would allow customers to browse
and download applications using their Windows Mobile 6.5 or earlier phones, and
would offer developers the opportunity to connect with Windows Mobile users.
Surely, Microsoft also hopes to compete with the Apple App Store, which
features thousands of applications. In only half a year, the App Store has had
more than 500 million applications downloaded, according to Reuters.
Until now it's been difficult for Windows Mobile developers to get their
applications into the hands of customers. Windows Marketplace for Mobile will
ideally change this, Ballmer said, by including an application marketplace in
the Start menu of every Windows Mobile 6.5 device-a definitely hard-to-miss
location.
While those devices have yet to be released-though a timeline should be
available soon, said a source-customers can now access the Windows Marketplace
for Mobile Web portal.
The portal offers the ability to search by operating system or by Pocket PC or
smartphone, as well as to browse by topics such as "Business and Office
Productivity" and "Networking and Communication." Customers are
then pointed to available providers. Pocket Quicken, for example, has quick
"Buy It Now" buttons to Handango and MobiHand.
Nokia is also looking for a piece of the applications market, and plans to open
an online application store called Ovi in May, hopeful of its direct reach to
50 million consumers, versus the 20 million iPhones Apple has sold. Research
firm Strategy Analytics forecasts that the mobile content market will grow 18
percent in 2009 to $67 billion.
