There is some news regarding Windows Phone Marketplace.
Windows Phone Marketplace currently offers more than 9,000 quality apps and games and enjoys a base of over 32,000 registered developers, delivering an average of 100 new apps every day. The Windows Phone Developer Tools have now been downloaded more than one million times, and we recently announced an update to let developers take advantage of OS updates such as the addition of copy and paste functionality – Todd Brix
He would like to share the following with the Windows Phone Developer Community regarding Trial use and monetization:
Trial Use
The Windows Phone platform enables developers to easily add a configurable Trial capability to their application. Our theory when building this capability was that more users would consider and buy apps if they could try the app out first to see if they like it. Results?
- Users like trials. Paid apps that include trial functionality are downloaded 70 times more than paid apps that don’t include trial functionality, expanding the number of potential customers to purchase the full paid version.
- Trials result in higher sales. Nearly 1 out of 10 trial apps downloaded convert to a purchase and
- generate 10 times more revenue, on average, than paid apps that don’t include trial functionality.
- Trial downloads convert to paid downloads quickly. More than half of trial downloads that convert to a sale do so within one day, and most of those within 2 hours.
Of course some apps do much better, and some worse, depending on the quality and nature of the app, but the trial functionality grows customer exposure and revenue substantially for most developers.
Ad Control
While it is still early days, we are also seeing some exciting results from developers taking advantage of the Ad Control. Since the release of our Ad Control for Windows Phone 7 last September, developers have been increasingly enjoying success building ad supported Windows Phone 7 apps, for example:
- Roughly ¼ of all registered U.S. WP7 developers have downloaded the free Ad SDK for Silverlight and XNA
- Of ad funded apps in the Marketplace, over 95 percent use the free Microsoft Advertising Ad Control
- Monthly impressions from our Ad Exchange has continued to grow by double digits – impressions increased by nearly 400 percent just since January
To ensure app developers are getting the most out of advertising and the Ad Control, the first wave of “How Do I” videos are now available on MSDN:
1. Create an Ad in a Windows Phone 7 XNA Game App
2. Register Ad-Enabled Windows Phone 7 Apps
3. Measure Ad Performance of Windows Phone 7 Apps
The team is also expanding opportunities for developers and in order to reach out to developers in more countries and regions around the world Todd Brix announced a new Global Publisher Program. This program will enable developers worldwide to work with a Global Publisher to submit apps to the Windows Phone Marketplace. For more info on how this works check out his blog post.
You will also find some changed Marketplace policies there. The most striking being the raise of the limit of certifications that can be performed for free apps from 5 to 100.