What Microsoft Can do to Win over Developers Microsoft has already taken some big steps in the right direction here. At last week’s BUILD conference they gave developers free goodies like the Surface RT, 100GB of cloud storage, a free Lumia 920 and a discounted developer’s registration to Windows Store. What else are they doing right? While iOS and Android pay 70 percent of the money from their apps back to the developers, Microsoft is matching that but offering even more to those that have apps that perform well. If an app earns over $25,000 it will go up to 80 percent profit on store sells. Windows 8 already has a ton of developers for its desktop side of operations, but that won’t do. The Microsoft Store needs to grow if Surface and other Windows 8 tablets are going to be successful. Offering goodies and more money are attractive points for developers, but what about making a platform that is EASY to develop for? That certainly goes a long way. Luckily, Microsoft seems to be getting this one right as well. With Windows 8 apps you can use a variety of programming languages including C++, Visual basic, C#, HTML, Javascript and CSS. In contrast, iOS only allows Objective C and Android is locked to Java. Flexibility in language choice means that developers don’t have to learn anything new– they can use the program knowledge they already have. This is certainly a positive for smaller companies that can train or hire tons of new help just to conform to whatever language a mobile OS is enforcing.
That’s a very big incentive for app developers. Would be interesting to see if this step kick-starts a head to head competition to the Playstore and iTunes.
When’s the app-store for Xbox getting launched? Can’t wait for that.
Can’t wait to get Instagram on the new OS. I hope they have started developing it.
C++ is far superior than Java.