According to PPCGeeks the official Marketplace app for Windows mobile 6 and windows mobile 6.1 has been released.

Get it here ( US Only ) : http://www.microsoft.com/windowsmobile/en-us/downloads/get-marketplace.mspx

for other countries : http://mp.windowsphone.com

As you may know, the PC version of marketplace went live yesterday with advance protection..this is a “better” protection than the original “CAB copy protection” Marketplace offered. This “advanced” protection uses license keys that are verified when you run the application, and given out and controlled by Microsoft.

The hacker developer Chainfire , who is a well know member in the xda-dev community has managed to bypass the protection with a generic hack that will completely bypass the entire code snippet provided by Microsoft that is supposed to check and validate your license code,for all Marketplace apps.

The 1st copy protection took him 5 mins to break and this one in under 2 hours. He will NOT release the code ( which is an exe file that runs in the background, good on ya mate ) but wants Microsoft to take notice of the issue and allow developers to to use their own licensing systems. via xda-developer

Developer portal improvements and stronger anti-piracy protection

Today’s update provides more advanced anti-piracy protection. While the underlying technical changes will be transparent for customers, developers will now be able to take advantage of these new protections by following the steps outlined in this anti-piracy whitepaper. As always, updates to existing applications can be submitted for free. To learn more about developing applications for Windows phones, head over to the Windows Mobile for Developers site.

Browse and buy applications from the PC
Starting today, Windows phone customers can browse, buy and download applications online at the Windows Marketplace for Mobile site. The selected applications are delivered wirelessly to the customer’s Windows phone and install the next time the Windows Marketplace client runs on the device. This creates another way for customers to easily find and purchase applications and gives developers a whole new level of exposure.

There are also reports that Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 customers will get the Marketplace addon this month.

NOTE : Anyone figure out how to download it on the PC, I am lost… I tried siging it with a test account but found no option to download/queue  the app

When the title of the thread reads ” Someone still working as MSFT or just celebrating Win7? “. It clearly depicts the frustration that the developer might be going through.

Some of the issues raised by the developer who goes by the name of MSWiege were

1. Update losses stars: If we update an application a new product is created in the dashboard but the already available reviews are not copied to the update, so we loose all our stars with every update.
2. Version numbers should not be bound to the update limitations: If we do an update of our app we need to increase the version number at the dashboard. As we already know by now, that is only because MSFT restricts us to only have 9 free updates for every app and pay 99$ again for the 10th update. Even if this is a discussion by itself, this “counter” should not be bound to the version number shown in the marketplace. The number shown should be a freely selectable number of the developer (like v2.4.2). The counter of the updates should be reset to 0 for everyone after this fix is made, because most of us had posted the app as e.g. v.1.8 what would result in having only two updates available instead of nine.
3. Application failed for no reason: Maybe this is just me, but I reported about 6 weeks ago that one of my application for the UK market has failed certification for no reason. I already got confirmed from MSFT employee Mike Liu, that it is an error and the app should have passed, but it still shows as error in my dashboard and that’s why I can’t send it to the market. Mike said I could do an update as workaround, but I don’t want another app have a mismatch between the shown version number and the actual version number of the app (see no. 2).
4. W8BEN-forms are not getting processed: Two month ago I had an eMail conversation with Bill Hurwitz of MSFT and asked him about the W8BEN-form I had send to MSFT about 1 week earlier. This forms reports the US tax number needed for every non-US developer to get payed by MSFT. The response was, that they are processed soon and I will be contacted. I now have resend my form while I was in the US about 3 weeks ago just to be sure that it gets there – but still no response what so ever.
5. Using non-US credit card on US marketplace gives “Marketplace could not connect because the server is unavailable”: If you try to buy a product from the US marketplace using the emulator from outside of the US, you end up with a “Marketplace could not connect…” error after entering your non-US credit card information. This maybe would nothing much to worry about if there wasn’t also this:
6. No ability to switch to other markets: Customers (nor developers) are able to switch to another market to get application there. Because in some countries are soooo few applications available it is very important to be able to switch to other markets to buy applications there. For developers it is very important too, to be able to see his products on other markets for real – instead of the Dashboard having this next issue:
7. Stars in Dashboard always show 5 stars (once it has at least on review), no matter how many stars the application really has.
8. Availability for WM6.1 and Web: Finally we are still waiting for the Marketplace to be available for WM6.1 and the web online catalog.

Read the full article here : ( more developers are adding to the list of problems )

With only a limited number of apps available via regional marketplace. Both consumers and developers have been nagging Microsoft to fix it and finally they have decided to allow Users to switch between various Marketplace, but there is no time frame as to when this will come out. As usual xda-developer members have found a fix, what would we do without them.

The fix comes from Chainfire, MarketPlaceRegionSwitch is a free pocket pc software that aloows the user to switch MarketPlace to USA, Germany, France, Netherlands, etc. Whatever you want – without mucking with regional settings, soft-resetting, etc. This app actually fools Marketplace into thinking you are from somewhere else, this hack may be patched by Microsoft in the near future.

The app should remain running while running Marketplace! It will (should) automatically exit once you exit Marketplace. Be sure to use the menu->exit function, instead of the X (the latter will usually just hide Marketplace, not close it).

WARNING :
Plz read through the developers thread, before installing or using the app. If you download any foreign Marketplace App, we are not sure how it will be treated once the loophole is patched. PLZ DO NOT BUY ANY APPS FROM ANY FOREIGN MARKETPLACE

Download this Application

While with the release of WM6.5 just around the corner. Windows Mobile Users will be having access to the Windows Mobile Marketplace on this new OS from Microsoft. Unfortunately older version of the OS will not get access to the Appstore right away. MoDaCo is reporting that the Windows Mobile App Store will be hitting WM6 and WM6.1 user as early as November. Hopefully with the release of the Appstore , we might see more Pocket PC Software for Windows Mobile.

The Marketplace team has put together the following two walkthroughs for Windows Marketplace Registration and Application Submission.

Read the rest of this entry »

The second version PDF with detailed info on Market place submission for Windows Mobile has emerged on the msdn Forum. The main difference between this document and version 1.0 are the references to test cases applying to Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1. The Windows Marketplace submission will be accepted beginning July 27, 2009. ( thats today!!!! .. Developers go nuts , send in your entries .. get your apps in there for us to download, when we get access to Marketplace )

Application Submission Requirements Version 1.1

via Frank Prengel’s Blog

Update : ( looks like it a few days old , it was covered by msmobile a few days back )

WMPowerUser is reporting that Microsoft France’s Windows Mobile product manager has revealed that Microsoft intends to launch with 600 applications in Marketplace for Windows Mobile. Marketplace is said to be released as a part of Windows Mobile 6.5.

If you want to go over the entire details check this PDF but the folks @ wmexperts.com has gone through that and has posted some of the ‘questionable’ ones as

• No VOIP apps using a carrier’s data.
• No apps that replace or modify the default dialer, SMS or MMS apps.
• No apps with an OTA download of over 10MB.
• No apps that change the default browser, search client, or media player on the device. ( expect the opera browser’s make this my default browser option to go away )

One of the things Windows Mobile users see as an advantage of Windows Mobile is the freedom that was available for third party apps to modify the underlying OS. some of the great windows mobile apps like PocketCM will never be approved by the app store if all these restrictions are placed on the approval process. I think these strict approval process will have a negative impact on the popularity of Windows Mobile and drive more developers away to other platform like the iPhone or Android. As a Windows Mobile user what do you think about these restrictions ?