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Windows Phone 8 Having Trouble Attracting Developers

Posted by Soulskill on from the have-you-tried-bacon dept.

colinneagle writes "Microsoft has promised that cross-platform development across the 8s – from Windows 8 on a desktop to Windows Phone 8 – will be a simple matter, but that's still not enough to get some developers moving on Windows Phone 8 support. The Windows Phone platform has made a remarkable recovery since its reset with version 7. Since then, WP7 has grown to 100,000 apps. But that pales in comparison to the 675,000 in Google Play and 700,000 in the Apple App Store. Granted, there's a ton of redundancy – how many weather or newsfeed apps does one person need? – but it points to availability and developer support. A report from VentureBeat points out what should be obvious: that while developers like Windows 8, they aren't as excited about Windows Phone 8 software because they have already made huge investments in other platforms and don't want to support another platform. A survey by IDC and Appcelerator found 78% of Android developers were 'very interested' in programming for Android smartphones, a slight drop from the 83% in a prior survey. Interest in the iPhone and iPad remained undiminished, with 89% and 88% interest, respectively."

5 of 268 comments (clear)

  1. Made $4 with WP7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    After three months of effort writing a free app for Windows Phone 7, so far I have made a total of $4 from Microsoft's advertising system. This is from the top-rated app in its category. Needless to say, I won't be writing any apps for Windows Phone 8 unless I'm being paid to do so.

  2. Re:No surprise here by Animats · · Score: 4, Informative

    And Microsoft has shown on several occasions in the past that they're willing to pull the plug on various developer technologies if they're falling behind, or just if the business strategy has changed.

    Ah, yes. Softimage, PlaysForSure, Silverlight, Zune... On each, the plug was pulled suddenly; they weren't slowly phased out.

    I wouldn't be at all surprised if Microsoft backs off from desktop Metro. Enterprise customers hate it and want it to just go away.

  3. The SDK only came out today by zanderz · · Score: 5, Informative

    How many developers could there be in only a few hours? http://www.zdnet.com/microsoft-delivers-windows-phone-8-software-development-kit-7000006631/

  4. Re:i dont see the problem by bloodhawk · · Score: 4, Informative

    If you take a look they actually have the vast majority of top tier apps as well. last look it was something like 90% of the top tier apps.

  5. Re:They will have to invest in carriers by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yea, if you recall the iPhone was a big deal and then the App store was released after many people already had the HW.

    Much easier to woo devs when you got a large install base, vs. trying to court them when most have not even heard of your HW/SW.

    Actually the iPhone was a strange situation. Apple at that time (and still does) wanted devs to write web apps (and Apple worked hard to get geolocation, sensor data, and local storage in HTML5). But devs wanted a native SDK, and they kept clamoring. So much so that they hacked together an SDK from MacOS X headers so jailbroken iPhones could easily get apps.

    Apple saw this and created an SDK and the App Store. (And still allows webapps to be released with no approval required at all).

    It's very easy to attract developers when they're banging on your door begging to develop for your platform.