Developing & Making your Applications Submission Ready for Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

Sidharth Sehgal had the unenvious task of engaging an audience post lunch at WindowsPhoneCamp held in Hyderabad on 28th January. He stated his objectives for the session early: Learn, see, experience. This session was a live demonstration for developing applications. The demonstration highlighted a few of Visual Studio’s special features, including panorama control, which allows seamless horizontal scrolling between application pages. Pivot control is similar to panorama control, but allows user to tab through pagesUsing 'launchers,' the presenter demonstrated a simple GPS application that launches an email application. The code was fed a launcher task, EmailComposeTask to email current geographical location to a specified address using only four lines of code.

“What are the advantages of developing apps for Windows Phone, over established devices like Android or iphone?” This was a recurring question through all the sessions, asked by the developers. Ujwal Kumar presented the benefits of Marketplace in the final session for the day.

Some of the salient features of Marketplace were outlined. Developers can build an unlimited number of apps, with a restriction of 100 free apps per developer. The updated Marketplace allows soft key access to all apps, all games, all music or all podcasts It features a new Beta distribution service, a service that provides for a maximum of 100 beta test users to test the app and provide feedback. Another feature is the new Private Distribution service. A developer can use this service to restrict visibility and availability of an app to specified email addresses and organizations.

Marketplace Test kit includes a comprehensive design guideline for making apps look better. Ujwal recommends following the Metro design philosophies to ensure consistency.

Each app submitted to Marketplace is subject to test criteria pillars. They are checked for reliability, efficient use of resources, absence of malicious software, interference with phone functionality and Microsoft’s global content policies.

The monetary incentive for developers is that they keep 70% of the revenue generated from purchased apps.

If you are a mobile app developer waiting to explore Windows Phone 7, do then do click here