More Details on Microsoft's Windows Marketplace

Some more details on the recently announced Microsoft Windows Marketplace have emerged recently, making some developers wonder if the Redmond company has indeed a great interest in the application process.

As many of you might already know, the company announced that developers that would like to have their applications available on the Marketplace would have to pay a $99-per-year fee in order to be able to submit a number of five applications to the portal. It seems that these five submissions would also include application updates no matter the size of the update.

At the same time, those developers that would like to submit more than five applications would have to pay $99 for each new app, which translates into a full submission fee for any update past the five applications included initially in the annual fee. Basically, in case developers would like to fix small bugs in their software, that could prove to be a rather expensive process.

“This process is to make sure that the end user experience is optimal, and that the device and network resources are not used in a malicious way. We believe that $99 is an acceptable cost of doing business, in order to gain access to a universe of millions of customers that are interested in purchasing your applications,” stated a Microsoft spokesperson, as reported by mocoNews.

Microsoft says that its move is driven by the idea of allowing only applications that are worthy to be added to its Windows Marketplace, yet some developers might not see the company's rules as too attractive. Especially considering the submission fees announced by other companies that launched app portals, such as Apple or Google. For what it's worth, Microsoft's app store isn't up and running just yet, and it would surely be interesting to see how things evolve in the end.