While many app developers have merely reworked their Android or iOS apps to function on Windows Phone 7, a handful of independent app makers are developing exclusively in Microsoft's mobile operating system. Why are these bootstrapping coders throwing all of their (spare) time behind the insurgent OS, and not Android or iOS?For some, it’s because there’s less competition on WP7, or because they’re most familiar with Microsoft’s tools, or because they simply don’t care for the way iOS and Android operate. Microsoft is fighting to exploit those beliefs and recruit the developers who hold them; the company's success or failure at doing so may mean the success or failure of the Windows Phone 7 platform.With just over 30,000 apps available for WP7, and only 2 percent of the United States smartphone market, Microsoft is a very small fish in a very competitive pond. But it is growing: According to Microsoft’s stats, Windows Phone 7 gained some 5000 apps in the past two months. Sure, that’s nothing next to the half-million apps on iOS, and the 200,000 you can find on Android, but WP7’s growing apps store shows that some developers think the platform is worth the time and effort.
Hearing the Good Word: Microsoft Evangelists and Thumba
At the moment, Microsoft is still trying to get its little app garden to flower. When Windows Phone 7 hit the market early last year, reports said that Microsoft was offering free equipment, revenue guarantees, and even cash incentives to developers to make apps for the WP7 platform, something that Apple and Google have never had to do for iOS and Android.Microsoft representatives won’t comment on whether the company still pays developers to make apps, but Microsoft isn’t shy about the fact that it is attempting to lure developers, employing “more than 1000 ‘Microsoft Evangelists’ around the world,” according to Matt Bencke, general manager of Windows Phone apps for Microsoft. These globe-trotting Evangelists seek out developers at iOS and Android developer conferences or at grad schools, or they host hackathons in an effort to “convert” programmers to the WP7 platform.“The hard reality of our competitive life is, we have to go where the developers are,” Bencke says. “We realize we're in a bit of an arms race, and the number of apps we have matters.”
The developers, Pieter Voloshyn and his partners Luiz Thadeau and Jhun Iti, were working on a prototype photo editor using Microsoft’s Silverlight at The Methodist University of São Paulo in Brazil a few years back. Voloshyn says that a Microsoft Evangelist based in Brazil heard about their project and reached out to him and his partners, supplying the three with a Windows Phone 7 device and allowing them to submit the app before the app store opened in 2010.Although Voloshyn says the team hasn’t made any money from Microsoft for developing the app, they have made a considerable sum selling the app itself, which costs $0.99. WP7 developers usually keep 70 percent of their earnings from the app store. Voloshyn notes that even though he couldn’t live off what he makes from his app, its earnings did help him pay for his recent wedding and honeymoon.Voloshyn isn’t starry-eyed about Microsoft’s position in the smartphone game, but being recruited by Microsoft was a positive experience for him. “I think the [platform] leadership will be shared among the three [Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7]. Microsoft came late in the game but came well, and I see a lot of gas for WP7 to compete,” he says.That said, when asked what kind of phone he owns, Voloshyn admitted that he still uses a feature phone: “I’d love to have a WP7, but the price here in Brazil, when it comes, is charged with so many taxes that it discourages me. But I still have a hope of getting it with a fair price.”
Astoundingly, even among developers, Microsoft needs to fight to make owning a Windows Phone 7 handset--and using it for everything in day-to-day life--a priority.
