Microsoft, Nokia to invest $24 Million to develop Windows Phone apps

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While recently Windows Phone marketplace crossed 70,000 apps in its market place making it the fastest growing app market ever, Microsoft & Nokia thinks that’s not enough. And rightly enough.

The entire success of a Smartphone ecosystem depends solely on apps these days. If the platform offers fun, useful and interesting apps, there’s no way the the platform would fail. While Windows Phone enjoys popular apps from Facebook, Foursquare, WhatsApp it still lacks niche content. No we are not talking about those fart apps but apps like Instagram, Path (Though Path is coming on Windows Phone soon).

Recognizing the problem, Microsoft and Nokia together have decided to pour in 18 Million Euros or $24 Million into a new mobile application development program, AppCampus, at Helsinki’s Aalto University during the next three years. While app developers neglect Windows Phone OS reasoning that the platform hasn’t been widely accepted yet (read numbers) and rightly so. Windows Phone still shares only little over 2% of overall Smartphone marketshare, which is quite less for developers’ interest. And that’s one of the reason many people aren’t opting for Windows Phone: No app volume.

While the platform is still considered a newbie in the smartphone world, it needs to tackle the catch-22 situation as soon as possible.

(source)