Microsoft has detailed their expansion plans, as far as the Windows Phone Marketplace is concerned, over at the Windows Phone Developer Blog. We already know the Beta Windows Phone Developer Tools for Mango were released today for developers only. Within the same post submitted by Matt Bencke, General Manager of Windows Phone Developer and Marketplace Experiences, he reveals future marketplace plans.
These plans include the following:
With Mango, Windows Phone Marketplace will expand from 16 to 35 countries where both app submission and app purchase are supported locally.
Today Adding with Mango Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland, UK, USA Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan, Korea (South), Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, Taiwan In addition, Windows Phone Marketplace now supports app submission in China, Israel and Luxembourg. For those countries that are not yet locally supported by Marketplace, we continue to expand the Global Publisher Program we announced in early March. Today, developers in 69 Middle Eastern and African countries can submit applications via Yalla Apps. App Port supports 13 countries in East Asia. APPA Market is available to developers in 19 central European countries. And both Device7 and MTel service China.
To better reach customers worldwide, I’m also pleased to announce today that Mango will offer a new web version of Windows Phone Marketplace. This will enable customers to shop, share and buy/download apps and games from any PC and send them directly to their phones. You get more visibility for your apps with no extra work.
The rest of the very enlightening and awesome post includes some statistics on where the Windows Phone Marketplace stands at the moment. The Windows Phone Marketplace currently contains well over 17,000 applications with 42,000 registered developers. Microsoft emphasizes it’s no wonder analysts are predicting that Windows Phone will number in the hundreds of millions in sales by 2015.
Words cannot describe how awesome it will be to be able to download applications/games right on your PC and send them to your Windows Phone. If you have an Xbox 360 you already know how convenient this feature is, it’s awesome that they will bring the same convenience to the (already convenient) Windows Phone.
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