Yes, rejections are charged, and you don’t get to resubmit for free. So if your application gets rejected twice and succeeds on the third attempt you could potentially get charged $297 ($99 x 3).

However having said that there is a lot of fear, uncertainty and FUD going around at the moment. I’m coming across a number of conflicting reports on the specifics of the market place implementation (for example are the 5 free “signing tokens” a permanent feature, or just a temporary introductory offer?). I guess the only true answer will appear once people can finally sign up.

One of my main concerns is around the app updating mechanism. If developers (rightly or wrongly) decide that paying $99 to submit a service pack style update is too much and instead implement their own individually designed update scheme within their application I can only see that leading to a bad consumer experience.

I can see scenarios such as someone purchasing 4 applications from the store. 1 will provide updates seamlessly through the marketplace, 1 will automatically download updates from a vendor provided server with no option to disable, 1 will have a manual ‘check for updates’ menu option that sometimes works, and sometimes throws up an error, while 1 won’t provide updates at all unless you look on their website and manually install them etc etc.

That worries me. Personally I see one of the main advantages of an on device marketplace being a unified purchase, install and update experience. As a Windows Mobile software developer who regularly deals with people trying to install CAB files etc it’s amazing how confusing the simplest tasks can become for some consumers.

On my iPhone I know I can check in one place for updates and that they will install in exactly the same way no matter the developer. I hope the same kind of experience will happen on my Windows Mobile device. It would be a shame to see this not occur due to perceived or real issues surrounding certification costs.

Spb Software is a good example here because they currently sell their software through 3rd-party retailers (such as those mentioned above) and sell their own software directly from their own website. MS really needs them to sell their software through the Marketplace to help establish the concept but they would have no incentive to cooperate if they had to hand over exclusive control.

I guess we’ll no the answers to all these questions soon enough but it does seem as if MS are making things a little too complicated for their own good.

This isn’t necessarily a bad move as it will ensure that Microsoft’s marketplace is free of the crap iFart-style apps that Apple’s App Store is famous for. A large software house like Spb wouldn’t have too much trouble paying these fees. However, I’m not sure if it makes that much sense to discourage developers from releasing updates.

Also, surely you don’t have to worry about WinMo versions if your app targets the .NET framework. Don’t MS release .NET updates for all versions of WinMo?

And what about freeware software? Can that be found on this site?

Would also incentivize better developer marketing of applications, to reach the earnout.

Just a thought.

This could become onerous for small developers of less popular apps.