Ageye

1800PocketPC : Why are your apps not in the Marketplace ?
Jörg Michel : As we heard from the Marketplace we didn’t want to put our apps on it at the beginning as the conditions were horrible (e.g. registration fee, per-cab fees, restrictions for the applications -> no today plugins were allowed, no registry changes in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and so on. Simply: many functions of G-Alarm to be a reliable alarm clock were not allowed).
A few weeks/months later they loosened those conditions (but not the fees) and also started a competition in Germany: The best German Windows Mobile app listed on the MP gets 20.000 EUR . That’s why we decided to register at the MP one month ago. As some of you may know / see we’re still not listed… Why? We don’t know
Microsoft employs an agency which verifies that the companies are valid which are listed on the MP. It seems that this agency only acts if you call or live chat with them. After many calls we finally received a positive feedback that we’re good to go (that was about 10 days ago) … but still: nothing. Again after some live chat sessions we only get following response: “we have technical problems, there is no ETA when it will be fixed.”

1800PocketPC : How long did Microsoft take to get back to you with a reason and did they inform you on how to get the app included in Marketplace?
Jörg Michel : Actually it is not possible to call someone at Microsoft who feels responsible for the Marketplace. Of course we tried it and they said: We get back to you. Well, they did. After one week with one line in an email: “Please contact our agency to get confirmed”… Well, Nothing more to say about that. Contacting someone on the Marketplace homepage is not possible – if you use the contact form don’t expect an answer within months (these are experiences from other developers as well), it’s also not possible to find a phone number (at least not on the German MP page).

1800PocketPC : How do you feel about the whole scenario ?
Jörg Michel : It’s ridiculous… That’s how Microsoft wants to win against iPhone, Android and Pre? No way. I think they don’t get it: The developers don’t need the Marketplace – we’re selling on our page and on the sites of different resellers… The Marketplace is just another option. It took Microsoft one day to charge our credit card for the registration fee but that’s all they did and probably all they’re able to do… Microsoft needs us – the companies – to make the MP more attractive to the customers and to earn money. The conditions for the developers are bad – they need to put installation packages online which are not protected by any serial or internet activation. The cab files can be easily obtained by hackers. Probably in the next months the warez boards are full of unprotected Marketplace version of all programs and Microsoft does nothing.
Dear readers, we don’t want you to boycott the MP. If you want to buy an application just think twice about how to support the developers best, where to buy it and so on… Actually we don’t know if we’ll get listed on the MP and if we stay on the MP. We just know that this is not how Microsoft or any company should deal with their partners.

1800PocketPC :
Jörg Michel : Are there any new apps in the works from you guys ?
Currently we’re working on two projects: G-Profile gets a complete and sexy remake, a beta version will be released within the next days…
And another – still very secret – project called “Infinity”. It will be “just another” home screen suite… We didn’t like the home screens shipped with the latest devices as they are not very customizable and the 3rd party tools are partly very very expensive. Anyway, this project is in a very early stage but we hope that we can soon show you some pictures/videos of it…

1800PocketPC : Is there a plan to go on to iPhone / Android ?
Jörg Michel : Definitely not.

Well unhappy developers are not gonna help Windows Mobile’s battle against other platforms. We can understand there might be some time constraints in Microsoft getting a reply to all developers who apply to get included in Marketplace but replying to the developer with the reason why they were not approved and how to fix that is not too much to ask is it ? What do you guys think ?

If you are a developer we would like to know what your experience was in dealing with Microsoft in regards to getting approved into Marketplace. Contact us

Tags: developer interview