14 DAY TRIAL // Ever since Microsoft debuted the new Windows 8 operating system, the company has constantly called for developers to create apps for this particular platform through various campaigns and programs started around the world.
This time, the Redmond-based technology giant is trying to steal developers from iOS, currently the largest mobile platform on the market.
MIT Technology Review writes that Microsoft held a special session at its Californian headquarters to show iOS developers the benefits of creating Windows 8 apps.
And as far as developers are concerned, porting applications to Windows 8 is very likely in the near future.
“If you’re a professional dancer, would you want to dance on a stage with broken boards and holes on the floor? No, you want to dance on a stage that’s clean and organized. That’s what these guys—especially Apple, and it looks like Microsoft—are like,” one of the developers who attended the conference told the aforementioned source.
According to several unofficial sources, there are more than 30,000 applications in the Windows Store right now, most of them delivered with a freeware license.
But Microsoft is a lot more optimistic when it comes to the growth of the Windows Store. More than 100,000 apps are expected to go live by February 2013, a company spokesperson said in October.
While that’s fairly impossible given the fact that the Store hasn’t even reached half of that target with only one month to go, the biggest problem is that world-renowned apps are still missing.
And what’s even worse is that Google has recently revealed that it doesn’t plan to develop other Windows 8 applications, while Facebook said it has no intention to release an official client for Microsoft’s new operating system.
Microsoft’s only hope is that developers will create some truly great third-party clients that will be good enough to make people forget about official apps.