Microsoft gives older WinMo devices access to application store

Microsoft made good on its promise in July to open up the Windows Marketplace for Mobile to older versions of Windows Mobile.

The application store is now available on devices running the 6.1 and 6.0 versions of WinMo along with the newest version, 6.5. The move should make the platform more attractive to developers given the fact that the application store can reach some 30 million devices.

Windows Marketplace for Mobile was introduced about one month ago and now supports more than 800 apps. The number, of course, pales in comparison with the more than 100,000 apps in Apple's App Store. But Microsoft is aiming to make itself more developer friendly than Apple, and hopes the move will lure developers away from rivals.

"Microsoft was among the first to make transparency a core tenet of our relationship with developers and we're pleased to see others in the industry follow suit," the company said on its Windows phone blog. "We may not have built the first application store, but we did set out to pioneer a fresh Marketplace experience that we look forward to expanding upon in the months and years ahead."

For more:
- check out this InformationWeek article

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