Reportedly, Microsoft is aggressively pursuing mobile development firms to create apps for the Windows Phone OS. With just 70,000 apps in the Windows Phone Marketplace, the platform lags far behind Apple’s App Store and Google Play, which each have hundreds of thousands. In order to beef up its catalog, Microsoft has been offering developers training, free hardware and cold, hard cash — more than $100,000 in some cases — to entice them to create new apps.
“What we need to do is go invest in telling the Windows Phone story to people around the world…and we haven’t done that,” said Microsoft’s Terry Myerson. “When that is achieved, it will start a virtuous cycle with developers.”
