Microsoft has brought a new series of enhancements to its Windows Phone Marketplace

Jun 15, 2012 12:08 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft made a new series of enhancements to the developer portal for its Windows Phone application builders, in an attempt to provide them with a better experience than before.

Thus, the company announced that they would see significantly lower wait times when it comes to having their applications published in the Windows Phone Marketplace.

The Redmond-based software giant announced that it has made changes to the app approval and publishing process, and that developers should have their software listed in the storefront much faster than before.

Moreover, the company also removed app information that was no longer used, thus trimming the Marketplace feed improving the average publishing times.

“The period between hitting the publish button and seeing your certified app become visible in Marketplace has improved by 20 to 30 percent. It now takes roughly 3 to 4 business days to certify and publish an app,” Microsoft’s Todd Brix notes in a blog post.

“We’re also seeing a similar decrease in the lag time between certification and availability of your app in the Marketplace—to less than 1 day, on average. (You might experience different wait times depending on the app you’re submitting.)”

Other improvements are also being planned for the Marketplace, but some of them will take time to apply, and developers might still see an increase in publishing and certification times.

Additionally, Microsoft announced that the performance of the App Hub has been improved, and that developers would also enjoy better stability of the portal.

“This has made common actions like creating reports on your app’s performance faster and more reliable. I know some people, especially developers with large app portfolios, had experienced time-outs recently and that should no longer be the case,” Todd Brix notes.

The unlocked phone renewals process has been looked into as well, and a fix that allows devs to register a handset with their account even if it was initially unlocked by someone else is now in place. App builders can now simply run the registration tool to unlock their phones.

Additionally, the company has expanded the pubCenter to 17 new markets in the next months, so that application developers in more countries could take advantage of Microsoft’s ad solution.

The new markets include: Austria, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Luxemburg, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, and Taiwan.