Microsoft is paying developers up to $100,000 to get their applications over to the Windows Phone 8 platform, according to a report from Bloomberg Businessweek. This is in addition to a promotion the company is running where it will pay any developer to get their app into the Windows Store ASAP in an effort to catch up to the iOS and Android app stores.
Microsoft first instated the broad $100 Visa card reward in March, offering the bounty to any developer or studio that managed to get its app in by June 30. The rewards were capped at $2,000 per developer.
But Microsoft has even more money to throw at the problem of an underpopulated app store. Sources speaking to Bloomberg said that Microsoft has “been offering $100,000 or more” to companies for building Windows phone apps. Windows Phone chief marketing officer Thom Gruhler told Bloomberg that the store now contains 48 of the 50 most-downloaded apps across all platforms, with Pinterest and Instagram as the holdouts.
The Windows Phone app store now boasts 145,000 apps, a lower number than either iOS or Android had achieved two and a half years after their launches, per a graph from tech-thoughts.net. Microsoft has not made clear whether it will reinstate the $100 Visa card app publication reward once the month is over.
