According to comments made by Microsoft Senior Director of Mobile Services Todd Brix on the Official Windows Phone Developer Blog, Microsoft is rolling out its new Global Publisher Program. The program will allow mobile app developers around the world to make their Windows Phone 7 applications available for distribution through the Windows Phone Marketplace storefront.
The Windows Phone Marketplace currently offers more than 9,000 apps and enjoys a base of over 32,000 registered developers, delivering an average of 100 new apps daily. To gain access to the app store via the new program, developers essentially fork over their creations to a Global Publisher intermediary, which will submit the app – on a developer’s behalf – to the Windows Phone Marketplace and determine pricing and service terms in the process.
Brix says the Windows Phone platform enables developers to easily add a configurable trial capability to their application. “Our theory when building this capability,” he says, “was that more users would consider and buy apps if they could try the app out first to see if they like it.”
The results showed that 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 also 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,” Brix says, perhaps most interestingly. “More than half of trial downloads that convert to a sale do so within one day, and most of those within 2 hours.”
To learn more about the developments Microsoft has cooking for developers, check out the Official Windows Phone Developer Blog.
