Epic fail of Microsoft: Windows Marketplace for Mobile - issues
November 05, 2009 [General] | By Edward J. R.
This week Microsoft has announced that further 800 people will be fired in the whole corporation. We are wondering: are people responsible for Windows Marketplace for Mobile among those 800 people? If not, maybe they should be, as Microsoft's app store for Windows Mobile is an epic fail. To call it "blunder" would be understatement. This is massive-scale failure.
A lot of current issues on Marketplace has been listed (these are not all issues, just a few, lack of copy protection for example is not mentioned):
- Update losses stars: If we update an application a new product is created in the dashboard but the already available reviews are not copied to the update, so we loose all our stars with every update.
- Version numbers should not be bound to the update limitations: If we do an update of our app we need to increase the version number at the dashboard. As we already know by now, that is only because MSFT restricts us to only have 9 free updates for every app and pay 99$ again for the 10th update. Even if this is a discussion by itself, this "counter" should not be bound to the version number shown in the marketplace. The number shown should be a freely selectable number of the developer (like v2.4.2). The counter of the updates should be reset to 0 for everyone after this fix is made, because most of us had posted the app as e.g. v.1.8 what would result in having only two updates available instead of nine.
- Application failed for no reason: Maybe this is just me, but I reported about 6 weeks ago that one of my application for the UK market has failed certification for no reason. I already got confirmed from MSFT employee Mike Liu, that it is an error and the app should have passed, but it still shows as error in my dashboard and that's why I can't send it to the market. Mike said I could do an update as workaround, but I don't want another app have a mismatch between the shown version number and the actual version number of the app (see no. 2).
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W8BEN-forms are not getting processed: Two month ago I had an eMail conversation with Bill Hurwitz of MSFT and asked him about the W8BEN-form I had send to MSFT about 1 week earlier. This forms reports the US tax number needed for every non-US developer to get payed by MSFT. The response was, that they are processed soon and I will be contacted. I now have resend my form while I was in the US about 3 weeks ago just to be sure that it gets there - but still no response what so ever.
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Using non-US credit card on US marketplace gives "Marketplace could not connect because the server is unavailable": If you try to buy a product from the US marketplace using the emulator from outside of the US, you end up with a "Marketplace could not connect..." error after entering your non-US credit card information. This maybe would nothing much to worry about if there wasn't also this:
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No ability to switch to other markets: Customers (nor developers) are able to switch to another market to get application there. Because in some countries are soooo few applications available it is very important to be able to switch to other markets to buy applications there. For developers it is very important too, to be able to see his products on other markets for real - instead of the Dashboard having this next issue:
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Stars in Dashboard always show 5 stars (once it has at least on review), no matter how many stars the application really has.
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Availability for WM6.1 and Web: Finally we are still waiting for the Marketplace to be available for WM6.1 and the web online catalog. Well, seeing the many issues with the one marketplace they have by now, I think this is really something that is not that important. I don't think that so many customers would download and install the marketplace for their WM6.1 and as always it is just a matter of time until most have WM6.5 anyway. And to be honest I don't see any real purpose of the web catalog: If I'm able to by the application directly on my phone, why bother using my computer to download and install an app on my device. It is much too complicated for "simple" customers. The only reason would maybe be to be able to switch to other markets there, but I really strongly hope that this "feature" will also be available for the "phone-Marketplace".
To learn more, visit related posting about Windows Marketplace for Mobile issues.
Credit: anonymous (submitted through news submission form).
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