Microsoft Is Apparently Still Desperate To Have Popular Apps On Windows Phone

It seems Microsoft is still playing catch-up in the mobile apps game. In fact, you can even say the Redmond, Washington-based software giant is desperate to have trendy apps on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

How desperate is Microsoft? It’s willing to pony up to have the best and well-liked apps developed for its own mobile operating system platform, a new report suggests.

The gist of it all comes from a report from The New York Times which says that Microsoft:

“is even going so far as to finance the development of Windows Phone versions of well-known apps — something that app makers estimate would otherwise cost them anywhere from $60,000 to $600,000, depending on the complexity of the app. The tactic underscores the strong positions of Google and Apple, neither of which have to pay developers to make apps.”

According to the publication, Foursquare and the Cheezburger Network have told them that Microsoft has offered to foot the bill for developing versions for the Windows Phone platform. A Microsoft employee, in fact a senior marketing manager for Windows Phone, is also quoted saying that Microsoft has offered an array of incentives to app developers (read: money for development). Needless to say, this senior executive did not divulge what apps Microsoft has spent money on.

To be clear, the report does not explicitly say Microsoft is “desperate” but a company paying to have developers of popular app support their platform just sort of screams that out loud. From what we know, Apple with its iOS and Google with its Android do not do this.

However, we get why app developers do this. Who would want to gamble money in a platform that’s not yet secure to have a massive user base? This is even more apparent with the estimate pointed out in the NYT article of apps costing $60,000 to $600,000 to develop.

So if Microsoft is still doing this, this fact still remains: Windows Phone has not gotten enough traction yet to warrant app developers to develop apps on their own volition for the platform.

Source: The New York Times

Images 1 & 2 from Emerson Alecrim & bfishadow on Flickr (Creative Commons)

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