Microsoft, Palm Launch 'App Stores'

EddieC 0 569 Views

Microsoft and Palm today separately advanced web sites designed for developers to post and sell (or give away) applications for their respective mobile platforms, playing catch-up with Apple, whose celebrated its one-year anniversary in July. Redmond also unveiled a series of new phones this week based on Windows Mobile 6.5, its latest version.

Microsoft's new site, dubbed , includes a bare-bones landing page from which you can view your application purchase history or visit the or developer community. At launch, Microsoft claimed to offer 246 mobile applications, and 753 independent software developers and vendors building more. Popular mobile applications available now include Facebook, MySpace, Netflix, Twikini, WunderRadio and ZAGAT, the company said.

But don't bother going there now to shop. You can only buy stuff from a device running Windows Mobile 6.5, which was first available on a phone just yesterday. DOH! Not only does Microsoft shut out 99.9 percent of current its user base, but also fails to address an obvious usage pattern--buying something through a PC browser (where it's faster and easier than through a handheld device) and then deploying it to the device. Fortunately, if you're a user of Windows Mobile 6.0 and 6.1 and want to buy apps online, there's an .

As limited as Microsoft's site is, at least it's a site. That's more than Palm can claim. The company's on-again, off-again App Catalog as of today is apparently off again. Under development since July, the latest "official" launch date was supposed to have been Sept. 24. The company today announced that its e-commerce beta program went live today, and that "[d]evelopers selected to participate in the beta program have the opportunity to make their applications, both free and paid, available to consumers." Developers have been submitting applications since August.

Also today, the company announced that the would include webOS in December. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I seem to recall a day when Palm's developer programs would precede[/] the device, or at least accompany it. Now, there's an web site that keeps track of the official one. This cannot portend good things for Palm, which should read and heed the : "Thinking Ahead is a Beautiful Thing."

Dani AI

Generated

As observed at the time, the 2009 announcements were an early, incomplete answer to Apple’s App Store momentum. A concise retrospective helps: Microsoft’s Windows Mobile marketplace did go live in late 2009 and later offered a web storefront, but the Windows Mobile/Windows Phone storefronts were ultimately retired as Microsoft shifted platforms; the older Marketplace for Mobile ceased operation before the end of the Windows Mobile era and the Windows Phone storefront was shut down years later. (en.wikipedia.org)

Palm’s App Catalog and webOS followed a turbulent path after the Pre-era hype. Palm was acquired by HP in 2010 and HP attempted to fold webOS into a broader hardware strategy; that effort was curtailed in 2011 when HP stopped shipping webOS devices. The platform survived mainly through community and open-source projects rather than ongoing vendor support. (techcrunch.com)

Practical, long-lived takeaways (useful when landing on this thread years later): preserve installers and device images now rather than later. For legacy Windows Mobile devices, archive .cab installers, the SD-card contents, and perform a full sync/backup via ActiveSync/Windows Mobile Device Center so apps and data can be restored offline. For webOS devices, community tools and homebrew repositories (Preware / WebOS Internals and related projects) provided ways to archive and reinstall packages after official channels faded. Treat any archived binaries cautiously: verify origins and check licenses before reusing them. (webos-internals.org)

Net effect: those 2009 launches mattered historically, but they did not create permanent, supported ecosystems for these platforms. The reliable route for long-term access is local archiving plus community-maintained mirrors and projects; commercial storefronts change or vanish, so preserving installers and backups is the only durable insurance.

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