This is part 5 of the Windows Phone 7 series.
Software Distribution in Windows Phone 7
There will be only one way for distributing our applications and it’s called Market Place. This means that there will be no more cab files or anything else. Market Place is an application, which comes with Windows Phone 7 OS. All the applications for Windows Phone 7 will be available for purchase and download thru Market Place. There will be two methods to pay for an application – with credit card and thru your mobile operator (by adding an application fee to your monthly bill).
There will be free, “try before buy” (trial) and paid applications. Trial API will be the way to make “try before buy” applications. This is very useful, because more customers can try your application, and it is less likely that they will return it. The developer will have full control over the time or the type of the trial application.
You can see the Trial API in action and more about it here.
So the first thing you need to do as a developer is to register for the Market Place. Note that it will not be free of charge. The mentioned price is 99$ for a year. If you are a student, you can register to Marketplace for free via DreamSpark.
With this registration (free or paid), you will be able to submit unlimited paid applications and 5 free applications per registration. Each free application over the limit will cost you 19,99$.
Microsoft also offers optional push notification service to help developers stay engaged with the customer. This means that you will be able to communicate with all your customers. There will be three kinds of push notifications - Tile notifications, Toast notifications and Raw notifications.
You can read more about the push notifications here.
Your applications will be able to update automatically from the Windows Phone Marketplace, but no more information is available for now.
There will be more than one cloud in the Marketplace service. There are two clouds at the moment – Public Cloud and Private Betas Cloud. Third cloud is mentioned, but it’s not official for now – Private Cloud.
The Public Cloud is for applications that can be purchased and downloaded by the clients.
The Private Betas Cloud will be for the beta testers of your applications. This means that you will be able to define people for your beta testers and only they will have access to your beta application.
The third unofficial cloud – Private Cloud, will probably be used for specific customers' solutions.
You can read more about the clouds in Marketplace here.
As a developer, you will be able to register a number of devices which unlocks the capability to side-load applications onto devices directly from development tools such as Visual Studio or Expression Blend.
See this article for more information about unlocking phones for developers.
Here is the process of distributing the application:
Source: MSDN © 2010 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
As you can see in this picture, after you publish your application, it will be deeply examined. If it matches all the requirements (Content and Software), it will be certified and signed. After that, your application will be available for the end-users.
You can see the “Understanding Marketplace & Making Money with Windows Phone 7 Applications” presentation here.
Content restrictions
Microsoft has posted a document, which describes all requirements for your application. You can find the document here.
Here are some of these restrictions. Your application can’t contain:
- Violence – blood, guns, exploding body parts, cruelty to animals, audio of humans or animals suffering. (I’m not sure if this will be valid for games, because this means no war games).
- Sexual content at all. That includes nudity too.
- Any illegal content – drugs, gambling, piracy, illegal online pharmacies, terrorist activities, underage drinking.
- Discrimination or hate speech.
- Defamatory, Slanderous etc.
- Any content that is restricted by the law (I’m not sure about the different country laws).
Software requirements
In the same document you can see all software requirements. The most important thing you need to know is that you have to ask the user for a permission if you want to use any resources (Camera, GPS, Personal Information – Contacts, Photos, Browsing History, SMSes etc.). You also have to ask the user to confirm that he/she is 13 or more years old, if your application enables chats or any other person to person communication.
Your OTA(over the air) installation file may not exceed 20MB. If it does, it will be downloaded via Wi-Fi or PC thru Microsoft’s software.
If your application needs to download large data (more than 50 MB), you have to ask the user for permission.
If you plan to include advertisements in your application, it must comply with the Microsoft Advertising Creative Acceptance Policy Guide.
If you plan to develop for Windows Phone 7, you should read all the requirements, otherwise your application could be disapproved and it will never meet your clients => You will not get any money for your work :)