Nowadays, cellphones are all about apps. AndMicrosoft is so determined to have lots of brand-name apps for its Windows Phone app store that it's willing to pay for them. All an app developer has to do is sign on the dotted line.
After years of struggling in the phone market, Microsoft teamed up with Nokia last year to challenge the dominance of Apple and Google, which makes the Android operating system. The latest fruit of their collaboration is a gleaming machine called the Lumia 900, which goes on sale in the United States on Sunday and is considered to be the first true test of how well the partnership will fare.
But the hundreds of thousands of apps that run on Apple and Android devices will not work on phones like the Lumia 900 that use Microsoft's Windows Phone software. And many developers are reluctant to funnel time and money into apps for what is still a small and unproven market. So Microsoft has come up with incentives, like plying developers with free phones and promising prime spots in its app store and in Windows Phone advertising.
It is even going so far as to finance the development of Windows Phone versions of well-known apps - something that app makers estimate would otherwise cost them from $60,000 to $600,000, depending on the complexity of the app. The tactic underscores the strong positions ofGoogle and Apple, neither of which have to pay developers to make apps.
When Microsoft offered to underwrite a Windows Phone version of Foursquare, the mobile social network, Holger Luedorf, Foursquare's head of business development, did not hesitate to say yes.
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