Microsoft is paying developers to create mobile applications for Windows Phone 7, with the intention of catching up to Google and Apple.
The company provides “financial incentives”, from testing devices and instruments to financing for the development and marketing of application, according to a Microsoft representative the works directly with the developers. In some cases, Microsoft also offers guarantees, promising to pay more money of the application will be sold as expected.
It seams that the reasons for which Microsoft is investing in this domain are tightly connected with it’s competitors, Google and Apple, in front of which Microsoft lost a nice chunk of market share. According to market trends, the biggest software developer in the world has to own a broad “library” of games, music and navigation applications to win over customers for their Windows Phone 7.
We don’t know right now how much Microsoft is planning to invest in application developers.
Regarding the situation of the company on the mobile applications market, even the executive director of Microsoft said that Microsoft “skipped a generation”.
