Don't charge me $99 to sell applications!
Andrew
shared this idea
We continue to evaluate Dev Center options for developers, running the range from enterprises to large publishing groups to hobbyists to homebrew devs who never intend to publish/sell apps.
Please continue to provide your thoughts, suggestions, and opinions – they are all taken into consideration as we evolve the WP Store and Dev Center.
39 comments
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vladimir
commented
@Stefan Stanescu, the point of making apps without any goal of earning money in store is huge, really. Gaining skills in phone dev, just learning platform, making homebrew apps for oneself... lots of reasons. And paying money for the try discourages of making the try. Publishing apps in store for profit - that's the thing that should be charged, not the possibility of loading just compiled app on the personal phone i've already paid for.
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Andrew
commented
There's a certain level of seriousness and risk involved. Sure, charging $99 ensures that app developers are serious about their work when they go to sell their app, but they also have to be risky enough to spend so much money in the hopes that it will all be generated back.
Part of the experience is checking to see if the apps we make are as good as we think they are, and for a lot of us, it's not worth $99 to find out. Thus, the Windows Phone Marketplace could really be missing out on something big; many great sales do not spawn from great risks.
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Stefan Stanescu
commented
Really? If you don't expect to earn over 99$/year what's the point of making apps?
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arsi
commented
I totally agree with that. Maybe there could be some kind of small fee to get the dev account but 99 dollars is definitely too much! I did just purchase Nokia Lumia and was planning to develop something for it but I'm not interested in paying that much for something that I would give for free or sell with low price. Too bad, that as a long time C# lover I still have to write apps for Android :/
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Andrey
commented
That's right, u can do like in Android, when you develop your application totally free, but registration in market place for money, one-time payment
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Henry Boehlert
commented
... and wondering why there isn't more enthusiasm to develop software for WP ...
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Anonymous
commented
I'm researching this and that before I start development. So what I'm getting from this forum is... You have to pay $99 to put an app on market place but then in order to recover your money from any potential sales you need some kind of USA tax arrangment.
All of this on the smallest of phone OS bases.It doesn't seem very developer friendly. We're not all big Corps that can throw a lousy $99 at every little thing that pops up on the internet. I know of only 1 person that has a windows phone, including myself that makes 2. I know lots with Android phones and nearly everyone has an iPhone.
I don't think I'll be publishing first on the Windows Phone Marketplace, if ever. :/ -
PseudoSoft
commented
$99 is the fee to unlock your phone, not necessarily to develop apps. If there is no such fee, it will be almost certain that people will be downloading XAPs from alternative sites, hence comprimise the Marketplace.
With that being said, $99 PER YEAR is too high for developers. MS should come up with a mechanism to compensate developers in order to encourage them to write more and better apps. Personally, I'd prefer a phase-out approach. For example, 2 years as an active developer, then the fee is waived or something like that.
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Landi
commented
There is another idea about the $99/year. I think the chance will be bigger if all vote for the same idea...
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AshokAndroid
commented
I agree. Do not charge $99 like Apple does. Follow Google and charge one time fees of $25.00 and 30% per app. Isn't this enough? Give us the developers a break.
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Adarsha
commented
@Cliff, ChevronWP7 is not selling unlocks any more, as their agreement with Microsoft was only for 2011. On their blog, they said that they have no plans to restock. So we need the alternative like "right now!!"
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XtremeG88
commented
I agree as a serious gamer i would like to have a app for our site @ www.twdps3.net but simply it is way too much. I would simply would like to have our clan members that has windows phone to have a whole new experience for the site, instead of the desktop version. If their is any developers nice enough please make us an application for windows or android or iphone, just so we dont have to have our computers at all time. And some of us dont even have computers like me. Please respond to xtremegoddog88@yahoo.com if you are interested, thanks
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Hoorstiii
commented
What about linking Dev Tools to one specific device on which apps built with them run? This way it wouldn't be possible to build a third party marketplace, but developers could test their apps anyway.
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Philip Lo
commented
Perhaps if there was a seperate market place for free and open source apps that would be great! You can download apps and the source code to make changes. Sort of like what Microsoft has done with TouchDevelop, but this time with C#.
This would get more people interested in programming.
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Luke Puplett
commented
I don't mind paying $99 but I want $99 worth of decent app management portal, sheeeze.
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Anetics
commented
Asking developers to pay is a good idea, we need quality apps in the marketplace, not thousands of half baked crappy little apps
Have you browsed android market lately, its littered with what i can only describe as utter rubbish
by planting the ambition to make money from their apps to recover costs it creates a better range of quality over quantity
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lduddridge
commented
i dont necessarily agree with a completely free solution as that could lead to an alternative site to the marketplace trading zap files to everyone who has unlocked their phone, but im all for a low cost personal use option.
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gu5tav0
commented
I purchased a ChevronWP7 token and unlocked my phone but due to a repair, I lost my unlock. I have been developing an app and will not be paying $99 to unlock the phone especially since the unlock will expire in a year. I guess I can throw away the app I wrote.
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Asimptota
commented
ChevronWP7 tokens are no longer available. It sux big time that you have to pay $99 just to try see your app on your phone. Please, fix this.
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Totolicious
commented
yup. it's not ok to pay money just to test the code on your phone. not to mention that you have to use third party solutions just because you are in an unsupported country.
