14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft continues its struggle to bring more developers on its modern platforms, so today the company has made another silent but really important change to its Windows Developer Center.
Windows 8 developer Martin Suchan has tweeted a short screenshot of his own account showing a message received from Microsoft, which tells him that accounts no longer need to be renewed each year.
“Developer accounts don’t expire. You won’t need to renew your account in order to keep your apps in the Store,” the notification displayed in developers’ accounts reads.
Previous Windows Developer Center rules required devs to pay $19 (15 euros) every year to renew their account and make sure that their apps remain available in Windows Store and the Windows Phone Store.
The Windows Phone developer annual registration fee was previously a lot higher, as every dev had to pay $99 (73 euros) to create an account. The company introduced a special limited promo to reduce the price in June 2013, but it then decided to make it permanent and allow devs to register for only $19 in order to attract more software makers to its modern platforms.
Bringing more apps on Windows and Windows Phone is quite a struggle for Microsoft, as the company is still fighting to convince more developers to port their apps to its platforms.
Building more powerful devices that are available at affordable prices is one of the ways to entice more developers to build modern Windows apps, so Microsoft has started working with partners to launch cheap tablets and laptops running its software.
For example, today, the company has started selling the Toshiba Windows 8.1 Encore Mini tablet that’s available for only $119 (90 euros), even though it comes with a 7-inch display, a 1.33 GHz quad-core Intel Atom Z3735G processor with Intel Burst Technology up to 1.83 GHz, and 1 GB of RAM.