Marketplace now live – hardly any apps
The history of Windows Mobile 6.5 has been if leaks and premature availability. This has been true for the first official availability of the OS, on the HTC Touch Diamond 2, and now also for Marketplace for Windows Mobile.
If you are running a Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM, clicking on the Marketplace icon will now download an app, which will install the official Marketplace app. Unfortunately the actual store is still very sparse, with no more than 34 apps available. The number of free apps are also very small, and the rest are pretty pricy.
Hopefully the official launch will see the market much more densely populated, but at present, the overwhelming if feeling is “Why bother?”
Via Engadget.com
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For all you WM developers out there… charging $20 for an app or more is a total ripoff for a mobile device.
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me- Reply:
October 5th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
the apps that cost 1-5$ are usually useless trinket apps. I would not pay 20$ for all the programs I have, but some of them wereare worth that much. If you think a mobile "app" is never worth 20$ it is because you have somehow never even considered the idea that there might be serious software out there for mobile devices that do compare with computer software because they are as versatilepowerful as their full-screen counterparts. If a mobile device has nothing to do with productivity to you and is all about cheaplow grade software, stick to an iphone or a regular phone, but drop the smartphone idea.
Ps. most "apps" that cost only a few bucks are just as much, if not more of a rip-off because they are usually available as free-ware elsewhere and are just cr@p begin sold for cheap to make a quick buck.
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me- Reply:
October 5th, 2009 at 2:31 pm
all my slashes were removed, "but some of them wereare" reads as "but some of them were (slash) are". "software because they are as versatilepowerful" same idea, reads "versatile (slash) powerful)
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“Hopefully the official launch will see the market much more densely populated, but at present, the overwhelming if feeling is “Why bother?””
You just answered it yourself. It’s not supposed to be open right now. You managed to get on it for whatever reason.
So turn it off, and come back tomorrow for the official launch, and then render an opinion.
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efjay Reply:
October 5th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
You would think a WM site like this one would be less inclined to subscribe to this kind of FUD story from a known pro-apple site like engadet. Doesnt take a genius to decide to wait till the marketplace's official launch before trashing it for lack of apps, guess the lure of being one of the WM-bashing herd was too much.
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wmpoweruser Reply:
October 5th, 2009 at 2:22 pm
Our take has nothing to do with Engadget. As a WM user who have been waiting patiently for Marketplace, I am very disappointed that when some-one OFFICIALLY flipped the availability switch they did it with such a small catalogue. I think there is in fact NO guarantee there will be more apps tomorrow, else why did they not fill the catalogue before making the software available today?
Also of note is that the Uk app store has 20% of the US app store catalogue, despite there being no language barrier of note. This is because Microsoft charges for each additional country.
Expressing disappointment is pretty fitting.
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l3v5y Reply:
October 5th, 2009 at 7:04 pm
As far as I know, there is no charge for adding different locales, though you have to have it certified for one market, then add an extra market.
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PoorWinMoDeveloper Reply:
October 6th, 2009 at 7:43 am
Wrong: They definitely charge an addtional USD 10 (for developers in Britain even GBP 10 or EUR 10 in other european countries) for each region, regardless of language. So if you publish to 10 countries you have to pay an additional USD 90 (first country is included in the initial USD 99 fee).
I am not sure what your talking about "no more than 34 apps"….there are 63 apps in the games category so far for me here in the USA running build 23053….that's almost twice as much in 1 category than you have in all categories.
so it seems as if marketplac shows different apps for different regions.
My marketplace version is 1.0.2128.0
I like how they did the screenshots and review sections.
I liek that I can review/rate on app on the device. to do so go to my applications in marketplace's homescreen.
I like how you can change view between paid, free, newest or view all….it might not be so obvious on how to change the view but it's right there in the top right. but I would like to at least rate an app from my device.
I like that it shows you which apps you have installed
I wish they had a feeback option
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i had 53 total apps…in the US
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I thinkmore apps are being added
in game category alone there are 66 apps
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My guess is they're doing a soft release to make sure it all works and then adding everything in for tomorrow. That's the way I'd do it, and the only reason we can see something like this happening is because we're sat using semi-legal software not released by MS.
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rico Reply:
October 5th, 2009 at 7:57 pm
Pretty much this. There's currently over 200 apps available, up from the thirty-something when i first read this article this morning. My biggest gripes are the buttons used for installing (the entire button needs to be a link, not just the caption text), and the fact that the navigation could get a little confusing once you start drilling down into a subcategory, but thankfully there's only one subcategory, at least in the areas i checked ou. i would like to see a future version of the store that scans what apps you have, not just which have been installed from Marketplace, and a way to limit apps by hardware compatibility.
i also noticed early on that some links were pointing to the wrong apps. Later in the day those problems were fixed. They seem to be working hard to make sure this works. Now lets see tomorrow how bogged down the servers get.
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ok, so I just launched the marketplace app again and see that there's an update for it, the new version is 1.0.2201.0
what version do everyone else have?
I think they added Social Networks in Category view….I don't know what else, but I don't remember seeing social networks earlier today
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Sry, this is the right link:
http://marketplace.windowsphone.com/
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