The amazing Long Zheng has dug up yet another Microsoft Job offering that once again reveals much about Microsoft’s future direction. This time two job openings reveal that Microsoft will be releasing a sentralized application marketplace, a la Windows Marketplace, Xbox Live Marketplace and Zune Marketplace, for Windows Mobile. The codename is “Skymarket”, but if their previous names say anything about the final name, it will probably be called Windows Mobile Marketplace.
I hope that Microsoft really learns from the existing App Stores out there (Sidekick, Handango, iTunes App Store) and build a much better (and sexier) one. Personally, Handango came bundled with my Samsung i760, and it is a bloated piece of garbage that is practically useless. You can’t download demos anymore, you cant see decent screenshots without having to wait for them to download, it doesn’t remember your login, etc. Plus they added all this other stuff to it (like weather and news) to try to make it something you’d keep open all the time, but it doesn’t do weather or news any better than the dozens of other programs out there that do weather and news. Hopefully MS keeps this one simple, and makes it more useful than Windows Update on Windows Mobile.
Congrats to Long who found this one first.