Windows Phone 8 Having Trouble Attracting Developers 268
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."
Made $4 with WP7 (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.
Re:No surprise here (Score:5, 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.
Re:Well, Yeah (Score:4, Informative)
I think that's where MS is going wrong on their whole setup, trying to push Devs onto the latest an greatest.
Whereas Apple and Google basically have you pay a small fee and you can get the SDK and app listed in their store. MS OTOH is telling Devs they need to buy a new untested OS to develop for their platform, in addition to everything else.
Re:Well, Yeah (Score:3, Informative)
The SDK only came out today (Score:5, Informative)
Re:i dont see the problem (Score:5, Informative)
Re:i dont see the problem (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They will have to invest in carriers (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Herp? (Score:4, Informative)
it's a vast untapped market that could soon explode in numbers to the smart phone market.
You and Microsoft are about a year too late.
The latest research on global smartphone shipments shows that 42 million smartphones were shipped in China in the second quarter, versus 25 million in the United States. Chinese smartphone sales tripled last year, according to Canalys.
Chinese vendors ZTE, Lenovo and Huawei all saw their smartphone sales increase by more than 100% in China last year. (Lenovo’s smartphone sales in China were up 2,665%.)
With Apple in fifth place in the Chinese smartphone market, Android is the country’s dominant operating system. Canalys says 81% of the smartphones shipped in China last quarter were Android phones.
http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20120803/devices/smartphone-sales-surge-china/ [rcrwireless.com]