Microsoft on Tuesday brought its Windows 8 road show to San Francisco, where the company previewed its upcoming Windows Store for app developers and media. They will open the online marketplace for Metro-style Windows 8 application in late February 2012. The key ingredients of the Windows Store are easy app discovery from within and without the online marketplace, built-in app trials with quick upgrade paths, support for both x86 and ARM-based hardware, and a flexible business model, Microsoft's Antoine Leblond said.
With Apple's Mac App Store and iTunes Store already operational and selling both computer and tablet applications, Microsoft is keen to highlight the differences and promises to make an application store that was more flexible, more transparent, and ultimately more lucrative for developers than Apple's. The Windows Store will make it easy for Windows customers to find, try and buy useful, high-quality apps from practically anywhere in the world. With code-named "Windows 8" and the Windows Store, developers can enjoy a built-in distribution and update mechanism for their apps. Built using HTML5 and JavaScript, the Windows Store is a fast, fluid, full-screen Metro-style app taking advantage of the Metro-style design principles inspired in Windows 8. Easy to build for, submit to and sell through, the Windows Store is designed with app discoverability and visibility in mind. The Windows Store will open its virtual doors to consumers and begin allowing for submission of free apps for Windows 8 Beta in late February next year.
The Windows Store will support both free and paid applications, with paid applications ranging from $1.49 to $999. As with Microsoft's Windows Phone Marketplace, developers can offer free trials, with integrated support for converting trials to full versions. Microsoft will provide its own advertising and in-app purchase infrastructure, but these will be strictly optional, if a developer wants to use a different ad network, or its own subscription and billing system, that's not a problem. With a standard validation process that developers can use even before they make their submission and an online tracker that tells them which phase their application is in and how long they can expect the process to take. But money is, for many developers, the most important feature of any online store. The Windows Store will take a 30 percent cut of application sales, just like Apple's store.
The Windows Store follows the path of Apple's Mac App Store, a software marketplace that's built into Mac OS X. That's provided a way for customers to quickly download both free and paid applications for their computers. Microsoft will offer the app marketplace around the world. Leblond said it will support more than 100 languages in 231 different markets. With the dominant operating system software as a lure, the Windows Store could evolve into a meaningful revenue generator for the company, which rang up just shy of $70 billion in the last fiscal year.
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