Smartphone word is full applications. Android is Adroid for its applications and Apple shot up to its fame due the numerous exclusive apps. However, Microsoft has started to promote its new Windows OS more vividly lately, but now the giant has announced a move that would help them garner numbers.
Microsoft Corp. is looking at developing numerous applications for the next version of its Windows operating system and for that it has lined up design firms, recruited interns and sent engineers on an around-the-world road show to help developers get them built, according to AdAge.This move will certainly give Microsoft a power to compete with contemporaries but unlike Google and Apple, it does not have developers queuing at its door with a ready proposal.
As Microsoft struggles to keep up with a technology landscape that is moving beyond personal computers into a future defined by mobile devices, the company is under pressure to gain a toehold in tablets. Demand for these handheld machines is driven by apps, which Gartner predicts will generate $58 billion in sales in 2014 says AdAge.
The company has said for the first time that it plans to have machines with the operating system on store shelves by year-end holidays with a revamped version of its flagship software Windows 8.
It is said that the new machine designed by Microsoft will be comparable to iPad with 200,000 apps and will not support the older apps forcing the company to start all over again. Hence the steer!
AdAge further reports that for much of February, app developers could come to Building 20 at Microsoft’s Redmond, Washington campus and turn their app over to a Windows engineer who tries it out and provides feedback. Now Microsoft has taken that program on the road, visiting 87 cities, including New York, Paris and Guangzhou, China and developers who are earlier in the process those with an idea yet no app can attend a different program called an App Acceleration Lab to get advice on shaping their product.
Another Microsoft-led effort has been in place since September. The company has trained more than 80 design firms to aid or build apps for developers who aren’t familiar with Windows’ new design or design in general, said Catherine Brooker, a spokeswoman for Microsoft.
Unlike with Windows Phone, Microsoft is not paying app developers to build for Windows 8 it has encouraged its own employees to write apps by waiving so-called moonlighting restrictions on workers, which keep staff from writing apps on their own time. With traditional PCs, it wasn’t hard to convince developers to build programs for Windows, the dominant operating system.
Microsoft’s tablet challenge is harder. It must win over app firms and developers that grew up building programs for smartphones and tablets, where Microsoft has little and no share, respectively.
Unlike the old apps that don’t work with some Windows 8 devices, the new ones will be available not only to buyers of tablets, but also to the more than 300 million buyers of Windows PCs. That won over SigFig, a maker of a program that lets users track investments.
Facebook Inc., the largest social network, has no plans to make a Windows 8 app even though it makes apps for the iOS and Android.
Source: indiantelevision.com