After last week’s news, I’m pleased to tell you that Windows Marketplace for Mobile has today reached another major milestone by adding support for Windows Mobile 6 and 6.1 devices. This is an especially proud day for Microsoft because it marks our fulfillment of the Marketplace vision that we put forth only 9 months ago at Mobile World Congress. Last week we expanded the Marketplace experience to the PC and updated the developer portal to include stronger anti-piracy protection features for developers. Today, Marketplace is delivering some great free new features that enhance and expand the Marketplace experience to even more Windows Mobile customers.
Now available for phones with Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1
Initially, Marketplace was available for the new Windows phones with Windows Mobile 6.5. Today, almost all people with phones running Windows Mobile 6.0 and above with a supporting data plan can now access Marketplace. We’re delighted to bring the benefits of Marketplace to even more people, and give Windows phone developers the opportunity to reach more than 30 million devices worldwide. To get Marketplace for a Windows Mobile 6.0 or 6.1 based device, customers can simply point their phone’s browser to http://mp.windowsphone.com to start the download process; from the Web, customers can visit http://windowsphone.com/getmarketplace or simply click here. Then browse and shop a wide range of quality applications for work and play; roughly 90% of the apps in our catalogue already support Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 devices.
Updated application catalog and software vendors
The activity we’re seeing on Marketplace continues to give us confidence that we’re delivering the right value to the right market. Customers and developers alike are responding well to our focus on quality, ease of use and flexibility – both in the shopping experience and in our relationship with the developer community. We now offer over 800 applications, more than three times the number we offered when Marketplace launched just over one month ago. Additionally, over 1,000 software vendors and counting are registered to deliver great applications for work and play on Marketplace.
Microsoft was among the first to make transparency a core tenet of our relationship with developers and we’re pleased to see others in the industry follow suit. We may not have built the first application store, but we did set out to pioneer a fresh Marketplace experience that we look forward to expanding upon in the months and years ahead.
New online marketing campaign
Over the past 9 months we’ve made some promises. We told you that we would bring to market a fresh take on the mobile application store that delivers strong value and opportunity for developers and a convenient and confident shopping experience for people, across their choice of handset and mobile operator. Today, Marketplace is flourishing and the new features described above further deliver against our vision for establishing a new mobile application market. To celebrate this latest milestone, we are launching a multi-faceted online marketing campaign to ensure people surfing the web are aware of all the high quality applications that our developers have made available for Windows Mobile 6, 6.1 and 6.5 based devices. As we said in October, in the coming months you will see more exciting news coming from Windows phones and Windows Marketplace for Mobile as we continue find new ways of improving the Windows phone experience for customers and creating new business opportunities for developers.
We’re just getting started!