14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace has been growing fast lately, but the approval process for new applications has become slow in the meantime, and the company is offering some info on the matter.
Apparently, the explanation is simple. Both the increasing number of applications available in the Marketplace, and the availability of the store in new markets around the world have had a negative impact on the time needed to get new software approved.
Microsoft does not deny the fact that its App Hub is now less responsive than before, nor that the turnaround times have increased (by over a business day on average in the past three months).
“In three months the number of apps in Marketplace has grown by 60 percent, to nearly 80,000. During that period we’ve also nearly doubled the number of customer stores around the world, so there are now 54 markets to sell your apps,” Microsoft’s Todd Brix notes in a blog post.
“The addition of so many new markets and apps so quickly has slowed our backend systems,” he also says.
At the moment, the Redmond-based giant is looking into solutions to make the App Hub faster than before. However, this will take some time, but developers should be patient.
“We’re already in the process of developing a more robust and scalable Marketplace service that will address current problems and pave the way for the even more rapid growth we’re expecting in the years ahead. But engineering work this significant doesn’t happen overnight,” Brix explains.
These changes should become visible in the developer portal sometime in summer. In the meantime, however, a series of measures to ensure faster approval times are also taken.
One of these was the roll-out of more server capacity in an attempt to offset the increased load. Additionally, the company is working on streamlining the processes to ensure that applications are ingested, certified, and published faster than before.
While these changes might not appear to be significant when the new service is released in late summer, the average app certification period was already reduced to only 2.6 business days, depending on the submitted application.
On top of that, Microsoft delivered a series of bug fixes to ensure that the App Hub responsiveness is increased.
“I’m well aware there’s more work to do. But I wanted you to know that we take your feedback and concerns seriously and are attacking the problem on multiple fronts,” Brix continues.