Microsoft Lures App Developers with Higher Revenues on Windows Store
More cash awaits app developers who intend to gear their products towards Microsoft's upcoming platform, the Windows 8, which the company said will be deployed to personal computers, tablets and smartphones.
In preparation for the 2012 full launch of its Windows Store, Microsoft said on Tuesday that it is ready to increase the revenue shares of app developers up to 80 per cent, especially for those who will successfully breach the $25,000 mark.
"We intend to offer the industry's best terms, so that the best apps make developers a lot more money on Windows than on any other platform," Microsoft program manager Ted Dworkin said in a blog post.
The new revenue-sharing scheme will surpass the current 70-30, in favour of developers, that Apple's App Store extends to programmers releasing their paid softwares on the currently dominant online store for applications.
Obviously, Microsoft's new ploy is an attempt to take on the market that Apple has been gobbling since the mobile handset industry exploded a few years back.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Apple gives out 70 per cent to app developers regardless of the total amount they have accumulated in the App Store and Microsoft has just raised the bar of competition by dangling the attractive incentives, which should benefit the more talented app designers.
The move, experts said, should also lure more developers to introduce their products to the planned Windows Store to possibly increase its contents in time for its late 2012 launch, which by then should rival the volume of apps that App Store offers.
Microsoft's gambit makes sense for many experts and according to Walter Pritchard of Citi Investment Research, the giant company is treading into territories that its finances can very well sustain.
While admittedly the software titan has suffered setbacks as Apple emerged as the most valuable tech company in early 2011, Mr Pritchard told AP that it would be easy for Microsoft to offset its projected revenues leaks on the new venture as the company still relies on its core business for the bulk of its earnings.
The Windows operating system, Mr Pritchard stressed, is what fills up the Microsoft coffers, and deploying the platform to more devices in the future is the company's ultimate goal.
And selling these new gadgets is the foremost concern of Microsoft, the Citi analysts observed, while milking the Windows Store comes as a secondary aim.
Microsoft has hinted that a partially functioning Windows Store should be unveiled by February next year, with the full version to be officially launched by the last quarter of 2012, in time likely for the general release of the new Windows 8 OS.
Like what Google Search has done for the Android Marketplace, Microsoft is also set to integrate Bing's functionality to the new Windows Store, which should allow users ease of access to apps of their preference.