Microsoft Windows Store Offering 20/80 Revenue Split to Developers

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 at 6:40 am , filed under Tech News by Kimberly

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"Microsoft Windows" Microsoft on Tuesday has revealed details of its new Windows 8 plans, differentiating its upcoming Windows Store from Apple’s own App Store and Mac App Store by presenting a 20/80 revenue split to developers.

According to the reports, Microsoft details regarding the upcoming public beta of the next version of Windows in late February, ahead of a release sometime in 2012.

Antoine LeBlond, VP of Microsoft Web Services touted Microsoft’s Windows Store, a feature in Windows 8 that looks like Apple’s own digital storefront models, as being more friendly to developers and publishers. However the software maker plans to provide in-app purchase and subscription features, developers will be permitted to use alternative options also.

Further he says that it’s not an app you might have on the iPad, his company (Microsoft) was looking to find a balance between differing strategies from the giants (Google and Apple). Google has a lax approval process that sometimes suffers from malware issues, while Apple has quality control and a strict, and sometimes opaque, approval process.

The Software giant is as well looking to woo developers to its application store by undercutting Apple’s 70/30 revenue split. Microsoft will take a 30 percent cut just for the initial $25,000 in app sales or in-app transactions before dropping its take to only 20 percent. However, the Windows Store will have a higher minimum price tag of $1.49.

Furthermore, Microsoft also needs the touch-based Metro apps be provided via the Windows Store. Earlier this year, the Software Company has initially teased the application store in a preview of Windows 8. In August, Steven Sinofsky, the Chief of Windows has unveiled that the company had an App Store team that was hard at work on the storefront.

In fact, Microsoft has been an extremely vocal opponent of Apple’s application to trademark the “App Store” name, claiming that the mark is invalid as it is generic. On the other hand, Apple had also fired back at its long-time competitor by arguing that “Windows” is as well a generic term.