Microsoft has opened its smartphone marketplace to Windows Phone "Mango" apps.
"Today we will begin accepting and certifying Mango apps through the App Hub," Todd Brix, senior director of Windows Phone product management, wrote in an Aug. 22 posting on The Windows Phone Developer Blog. "That's not to say that Mango will arrive on existing devices in the coming days (sorry, not quite yet). It does, however, mean that people running early builds of Mango will see these new apps and games."
Apparently, "the nearly 30,000 Windows Phone apps and games" will also run on Mango. In addition, Microsoft has tweaked the Windows Phone SDK 7.1, which includes a competed Marketplace Test Kit. The final version of WPSDK 7.1 is coming at "the end of September." Game developers now have the ability to submit games to new Mango markets.
Even as Microsoft ramps up for Mango's release, company executives are trying to use recent shifts in the tech industry (most notably, Google's intent to acquire Motorola, and Hewlett-Packard's decision to dump its webOS-based smartphones and tablets) to draw more developers and manufacturers to Windows Phone.
"To Any Published WebOS Devs," Brandon Watson, Microsoft's director of developer experience for Windows Phone, wrote in an Aug. 19 tweet, "we'll give you what you need to be successful on #WindowsPhone, incl. free phones, dev tools, and training, etc."
Given how HP let the TouchPad live a mere six weeks before pulling the plug, there really wasn't a lot of time for its developers to create much of an app store for webOS. But Microsoft has little to lose in trying to persuade those same developers--however few in number--to give its own smartphone platform a shot.
By Aug. 22, Watson claimed (again, via his Twitter feed) that some 1,000 interested webOS developers had sent emails.
Watson's tweet echoed a comment earlier in the week from Andy Lees, president of Microsoft's Windows Phone Division, who responded to Google's acquisition plans with a widely circulated statement: "Investing in a broad and truly open mobile ecosystem is important for the industry and consumers alike, and Windows Phone is now the only platform that does so with equal opportunity for all partners." He was playing, of course, on fears that Motorola Mobility will now become Google's favored child when it comes to Android development.
It'll be interesting to see whether manufacturers and developers give Windows Phone a second look after that big double-whammy.
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