Gives them head start on building apps with cut-and-paste
Microsoft has released the Windows Phone Developers Tool Update, which allows application makers to add new features to their apps enabled by the OS update coming soon, particularly cut-and-paste.
All apps currently available in Windows Phone Marketplace will continue to work on any phone that gets updated to the new version of the OS and any app built using this new version of the tools will also work on phones that have not been updated to the new OS, Brandon Watson, Microsoft’s director for Windows Phone 7, wrote in a blog post Friday.
Besides the tools update, developers will also need to install a Visual Studio update. Together, the updates will include new reference assemblies, a new Windows Phone OS emulator image and fix a few bugs. This latest update also contains all the fixes included in an October 2010 update.
Watson switched to bold text to make his next point that “Most apps will not need to be recompiled or resubmitted,” but advises developers to open their applications with the new tools and do a “sanity check” to make sure everything is alright.
It’s fair to say that the Windows Phone 7 brand is beleaguered, with Microsoft and the two U.S. carriers that offer it, AT&T and T-Mobile, declining to reveal sales figures, meaning they must be pretty weak.
But as with other successful products like Windows 7 or Office 2010, Microsoft is happy to share numbers that make it look good. So Watson was pleased to announce that the number of downloads of the Windows Phone Developers Tool recently passed the 1 million mark, that 27,000 people have registered as developers on its AppHub site and that 7,500 apps already line the shelves of the Windows Phone Marketplace. While that looks pitiful compared to Apple’s 300,000 apps and Google Android’s 100,000-plus apps, Microsoft must think well enough of that number to at least share it with us. Otherwise, they probably would have just said they have “oodles” of apps available.
In his post, Watson also said Microsoft has entered into a partnership with a company called Zones.com that, in cooperation with handset manufacturers, will sell developers phones without having to purchase a carrier voice or data plan. Lastly, Watson says Microsoft understands that its developers have also probably built mobile apps for other platforms like iOS and Android and continues to work to improve interoperability so developers can “ramp up quickly” to write on the Windows platform.
Monday, the research firm IDC is expected to release smartphone sales figures for the fourth quarter of 2010 that will give us greater insight into how Windows Phone 7 is doing than we’ve gotten so far from Microsoft and the carriers.
