Microsoft unification effort across devices shows up in Windows 8

Although Google's Android and Apple's iPhone devices currently dominate the smartphone market, there is strong optimism, if one were to go by Steve Ballmer CEO Microsoft statements, about Windows Phone growing fast to become a strong third participant. In order to get the volumes to grow fast tie-ups have been made with Nokia, Samsung, HTC and many others. Microsoft is expected to, going by the reports, to invest more in marketing and advertising around Windows 8 than it has ever historically done for any of its products before. This is primarily because it wants to unify Windows Phone devices, PCs, Windows 8 tablets and its Xbox game console. The biggest benefit of such an ecosystem is the consistency that it brings; avoiding in the process the need to relearn how to navigate. This is precisely the reason why one notices the modern visual style i.e. Metro featuring tiles across all its products. The tiles allow the users to get a glimpse of mails, weather forecasts, photos, media items, web pages and other information. The apps need not be opened for the same. Tiles can be "live," which means they flip around automatically to show new information. Also, the users can decide which ones are to be updated with live information. Another interesting concept is that of “Hubs” i.e. places where content, apps, and social networking, all come together. A Photo Hub for instance would enable one to see one’s own and friends’ galleries and have access to some photo-editing apps. Thus WP8 comes across as a very good option to be used as a smartphone for a lot of calling, texting, and social networking. Besides, the start screen feature makes it more customizable that any other android or iOS handset.

Part of the reason given for Windows Phone 7 not providing the results as was expected or not standing in comparison to iOS and Android because of the hardware which it was running on. However the problem seems to be addressed with Windows Phone 8. Underneath the familiar interface of the earlier version, WP8 runs on the same kernel as Windows 8, including the NTFS file system. The hardware is at par with iOS and Android devices in terms of screen resolutions, computing power, cameras and the ability to take advantage of advanced network bandwidth known as LTE. The biggest change to Windows Phone 8 development India is the new kernel, which allows Windows Phones to have dual-core processors. On the development side, rather than having to use Silverlight or XNA, third-party developers can write native code. All the WP7 apps is still compatible but the overall offering has much more potential and powerful because it offers more ways of develop apps. The problem though however is that MS did not release the SDK to the developers beforehand. However, Cross-platform development frameworks such as Apache Cordova, Sencha Touch and Xamarin.Mobile are all compatible with Windows Phone 8 with users of Sencha Touch in particular being bullish about Microsoft's new OS.

Windows Phone 8 surely would fall into category of OS which is very high on aesthetics based on the range of interesting features which it offers. Ultimately, to stand in competition against Android and iOS, it will need apps. But there is no doubt about the fact that it offers a good third alternative to consumers and is a big step in the right direction.
Mindfire Solutions has years of experience of having executed numerous projects on Windows Mobile Operating system and on devices ranging from Pocket PCs to Smartphones. Our expertise goes from mobile apps development from Windows CE operating system to Windows Mobile 5.0 to Windows Phone 7.0. Given our background and expertise we can be oyur reliable development partner for WP8 Development. To know more about our expertise, want to hire windows phone 8 developers and outsourcing your Windows Phone app development requirements, please contact us at sales[at]mindfiresolutions[.]com or call 1-248-686-1424. We will be glad to help you.

Windows Phone 8 Developer Numbers Increase By 40%

According to Microsoft Technologies, 2012 has proven to be a very good year for Windows Phone and its developers. During this period, over 75,000 new apps were published in the store and more than 300,000 app updates got submitted across the year. This results make it about 54 apps, on an average, getting downloaded on every phone. On of the primary factors to have worked is the expansion of the payment options for users. Working hard at implementing alternative payment methods such as Paypal, Alipay and carrier billing seems to have done the trick. This has resulted in developer revenue increasing by 40% since the launch of their Windows Phone 8 SDK. There has also been a phenomenal 95% increase in the number of potential customers with the launch of Windows Phone 8 across 191 markets ; this was earlier restricted to only 35. Out of the total of 150,000 apps now, the Windows Phone Store published about half i.e. 75,000 apps in the last one year. Although it is still far away from Apple’s whopping 740,000 apps , it is the rate at which apps have got published which should be encouraging . Also, in the process it has overtaken Blackberry by a good margin already. ( Blackberry’s App World has some 90,000 apps ).MS has also made it possible this year to share their concerns about an app or a game. With Bing powering the searches & with the addition of Smart lists, it has become much easier to locate a relevant app. Further enhancements have also been made like the new collections and recommendations for WP8 customers.

In the first 30 days of the SDK release, there has already been a 40 percent increase in month-over-month developer. Microsoft has scaled up its resources to handle a large influx of developer submissions. Efforts also are being put for die hard WP 7 users. They are supposed to receive the WP 7.8 update with a new start screen & some 10 new themes in addition to many new apps. Inspite of all the efforts, industry analysts have shared what they feel is a major concern. According to them, Microsoft has yet not promised its users the availability of the latest and the greatest apps with the best features first. Irrespective of the number of apps available in the store if the commonly used ones are missing, then it will become increasingly difficult to consider WP8 smartphones as an alternative to IPhone and other Android counterparts. The current Windows Phone Marketplace has no Pandora, No Instagram, a Facebook app which does not have the latest features and a Twitter app which has not been updated for a long time. Besides all this, the preferred choice to launch new apps is on iPhone first followed by Android. So in addition to having to clear the backlog , & do it really fast, they also will have to draw the attention of the Windows Phone 8 Developers as an alternative platform to launch their new apps.

Many analysts feel that there has never been a better time for Windows Phone or its developers since there is so much at hand which needs to be done. Microsoft is also doing its bit to woo them. If you sense this as an opportunity and have some brilliant app ideas in mind, we can be your preferred partner to develop them. Mindfire Solutions has years of experience of having executed numerous projects on Windows Mobile Operating system and on devices ranging from Pocket PCs to Smartphones. Our expertise goes from mobile apps development from Windows CE operating system to Windows Mobile 5.0 to Windows Phone 7.0. Given our background and expertise we can be oyur reliable development partner for WP8 Development.

To know more about Windows phone 8 development or Hire windows phone app developer for fulfill your testing requirements, please contact us at sales[at]mindfiresolutions[dot]com or call 1-248-686-1424. We will be glad to help you.