Does it make sense to develop under WP7? Exclusive interview with Microsoft

At the last MobileFest conference, we met with Vladimir Kolesnikov from Microsoft, who introduced himself as an “evangelist developer”. Vladimir is a specialist in interaction with developers and, in particular, he is responsible for the mobile direction. About whether it is worth making applications for Windows Phone 7, what kind of help you can get from Microsoft and, most importantly, whether you can earn money in the end, read in an exclusive interview.

What can Microsoft offer application developers?
We offer another platform that we consider very promising.

In fact, this is another market where developers can show up and earn money. Those who enter this market now will eventually skim the cream – this is not iOS, where there are hundreds of thousands of applications and just incredible competition.

In addition, we offer support, because we can afford to pay attention to almost every developer offering a high-quality interesting application. We can assist the most successful in porting, as well as make them an active promo on the Windows Marketplace.

And don’t forget that we have the best development tools, according to many, and we provide them for free.

Do you have fragmentation issues like Android?No, and we are very proud of it.

Your app will work on all devices.
I would recommend testing on the slowest device. Especially if you don’t use something that is only available on some phone models (for example, a 2nd camera or a gyroscope).

How do you assess your own market share of mobile apps?It’s difficult to determine market shares, and it’s even more difficult to determine dynamics.

Someone considers them taking into account Windows Mobile, and someone only for WP7. Therefore, it is necessary to know exactly what figures are meant.

While the share is, of course, very small, but at the same time, IDC and Gartner predict a great and bright future for us – largely due to the alliance with Nokia, which already this year promise to release devices with WP7. In their opinion, WP7 will become the No. 2 platform by 2015.

What application sales channels exist for WP7? There is only one channel – Windows Marketplace.

Like the App Store. There are no “left” markets.

How many apps are there on the Marketplace right now?About 30 thousand (a year ago there were about a thousand).

How does the appruv and feature happen?The appruv is quite fast – the average time (last year) is two working days.

It’s more difficult with the feature – you can’t officially buy it. You need to make a high-quality and interesting application, then our producers will notice you and start promoting. At the same time, it is highly recommended to promote yourself on profile sites, and finally, just advertise the application. Producers are engaged in monitoring the relevant sites and take this into account.

And who should I be friends with?With the local Microsoft, or rather, with the Department of Strategic Technologies.

If the application is interesting, if we think that it will help sell phones and promote the platform, we will be happy to create it ourselves.

Are there featured categories?- We don’t have a lot of them.

There is an app of the day, there are simply featured apps, there are tops – tops in general, and tops in separate categories (travel, games, etc.), there are subcategories. There is no separate feature. Plus – New block (in each category)

How is a place in the top considered?Calculating a place in the top is a composite metric of the number of downloads / purchases (conversions), your rating and the number of ratings (if the application is actively evaluated, it means it is either very good or very bad).

This gives a chance to new applications – even if there are not enough downloads yet, but every second user evaluates you and evaluates well, you will quickly get to the top.

How do you feel about stimulating assessments? For example, “give a grade, get a bun”?We don’t mind, please.

Are PPI networks (like TapJoY) also allowed?There is no ban on this.

The main question that worries the developer is whether his product will be able to earn. You can earn money in the App Store, it’s more or less clear to everyone. What about WP7? Wouldn’t it turn out that I invested the money, made an excellent application, went to the top – and the profit turned out to be small?
We do not claim that there is a lot of money – not yet.

But there are real examples when a WP7 game earned the same amount of money in 3 months as it earned on Android in a year.  Our message is simple: we offer a new market. A promising market. We do not offer golden mountains – again, not yet. We ourselves are now heavily invested in this market. Can we fly over? Theoretically, yes. Can we fly high? Yes! And a lot of people believe this, including Nokia, IDC and Gartner – they believe that everything will “shoot”, especially with Mango. 

Therefore, we invite developers to come to us now. We are not asking for an exclusive for Windows – take some of your successful title, which has already shown itself well on other platforms, port it to WP7 with our help, launch it on the Marketplace – and watch the results. And they will definitely be.