MS responds to WP7 critics with faster pay, tools

Microsoft's Todd Brix today answered developer criticism of no pay and no tools for Windows Phone 7. The company has moved up its planned initial payments a month to January and now has its first reporting tools. Developers can now see how many downloads they get per day in each country.

The company has also fixed flaws in the app submission process and enabled mobile ads for apps built on the XNA Framework normally used by games, Brix added.

All the implementations followed just as Microsoft was reaching another pair of minor milestones, nearing 4,000 apps and 18,000 registered developers. It reached 3,000 apps and 15,000 developers two weeks ago.

Microsoft has had modest early success but has been struggling to keep momentum for what is increasingly believed to be a fragile launch. Company VP Joe Belfiore attracted criticism just this week when he said Microsoft felt "pretty good" about sales for WP7 but refused to say how many phones had been sold a month later. While Microsoft had already said it didn't expect large sales volumes for what amounted to a platform restart, it has committed $500 million to marketing the OS and had likely been counting on a greater return on its investment.

The store is still growing quickly enough to outpace Palm's webOS store and should be growing faster than BlackBerry App World, which only just hit 15,000 apps almost two years after it arrived. Apple and Google are currently well out in front with over 300,000 and 100,000 apps each.

By Electronista Staff