price of developer license for Windows Phone 7? - windows-phone-7

Does Microsoft offer developer license for professionals and students? Is there a special student program?

If you're simply interested in developing using the emulator, there is no license fee to pay. Just download the tools and go to town.
Scott Guthrie actually has a good write-up of all the tools you'll need to download (for free) and how to get started:
Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools Released - ScottGu's Blog
Registering for the Marketplace to sell your apps is another story. You will have to pay a $99 fee to create your account there unless you are a student participating in Microsoft's DreamSpark program (in which case the registration is free there as well).

To develop applications, it's free.
But if you need to know the price to submit your apps to the marketplace:
Check out Windows Development App Hub
It's $99 US Dollers or £65 in the UK.
That allows you to submit 5 applications. It is $19.99 for each app after that. If you are a student, you get a load of tools free. You can access the student membership via the link above.

the registration prices are here ($99) - http://create.msdn.com/en-US/home/membership
there is a great blog post about how to get from concept to marketplace here - http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mikeormond/archive/2010/11/15/windows-phone-7-apps-getting-from-concept-to-customer.aspx

Related

Can we submit apps for commercial purpose with student account on Microsoft App Store?

I'm developing apps for Windows Phone 8, and I've a Microsoft Student Developer account registered at DreamSpark, so my question is can I submit apps for commercial purpose(to make money) with this account. So, please provide me sufficient and helpful knowledge for this.
Thanks in advance, any suggestion will appreciated.
Yes! Microsoft even encourages you to do this.
Section 4.c in the EULA states:
If you use the software to create software programs, you may only commercially use or distribute them upon the purchase of appropriate commercial license(s) for the software. You may however submit software programs that you create using the DreamSpark Standard Subscription software to Microsoft app stores, including for revenue.

WP7 - selling extensions

I'm trying to create some application for Windows Phone >= 7.1
During plannin my work and specyfiong technical requirements I've come across one problem.
I wan't to have free application with basic functionality. And then it should be extendable with some non-free extensions (dlls?, databases?, SaaS?)
Is it possible at the moment to use some MS api/app/etc. to be able to publish such extensions and sell them? What is the best way to do this if there is more than one solution?
Thank you for any help.
As of right now (June 2012), in-app purchases are not supported. Your only choices, then are being a paid app and supporting trial mode.
The only way you can do this at present is to handle the additional purchases yourself.
You'd have to set up a website which customers could create an account on and purchase extensions through, then have them also log into your app with those account details to determine what additional data to download or functions to enable.
You could be smart and include the website functionality into your app with a browser control. Take a look at the Amazon Kindle app for an example of how they accomplish it.

Windows Phone 7 App Deployment to Phone

I am developing an app, which I have tested on the visual studio Emulator. I would Like to deploy it to about 8 Phones within our organization. Is there a way to deploy apps directly to the phones without going through the marketplace, or without having to pay the $99 per year app hub memebership fee. I don't need to deploy apps to the marketplace place at this time, just directly to our personal company phones.
I have tried running the "windows phone developer registration", but I get a message stating that I have to register my phone in the Marketplace, and that is where I am asked to pay a $99 membership fee.
Nope, unfortunately you can't deploy to any phone you want. The phone needs to be developer unlocked, meaning you need to have paid the $99 AppHub membership fee and registered the phone. I believe you can register a maximum of 3 phones under one account.
The other option is to, of course, jailbreak the phone. Google to see if you can lay your hands on a copy of Chevron WP7. The other owners may not be very willing to go along with this though. On the other hand, they'd probably love it if you bought all of them AppHub licenses :-)
You can unregister phones on AppHub, so maybe you can buy one license, unlock 3 phones, test on those, then unlock another 3 after unregistering the first 3 ...
If you have one developer account, you can use the beta feature on the AppHub to allow the other users in your organisation to download the app from the marketplace.
You just have to add their LiveId to the app. There's a limit on users, but if it was 10 or 50, I can't remember. You should go check it out.
If you don't have a developer account, you're pretty much square.
Stay tuned for Chevron Labs, where you will be able to unlock multiple devices for a small fee (in case you don't need to distribute apps in the Marketplace - exactly your situation). Otherwise, your only official choice is the AppHub unlock.
You must register as a developer, for which you have to pay the $99 registration fee. However, the new AppHub update gives you the ability to deploy your apps to the phones in your enterprise at no further cost, and they do NOT have to be developer unlocked.
You have two options. First is the private beta, in which you can have up to 99 people get your app before it goes through certification. I don't remember if this is time-limited or not. Second, is after your app gets certified, you can publish it as a hidden app, and only those people that you want to be able to install the app can. No one else can even see it in Marketplace.
Don't mess with unlocking the phones you want to put the app on - the best way is to go through the process and publish the apps as hidden.

Distributing VSPackage: is there something to pay to Microsoft?

Seems like one has to get an Id and register as Partner and for such pay a fee each year ?!
From http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb458038(v=VS.90).aspx
When you are ready to distribute your
VSPackage, you can obtain a PLK for it
by visiting the VSIP Members Web site.
You must have a Windows Live ID to log
on. After you log on, follow the
instructions to obtain a PLK. For more
information, see How to: Obtain a PLK
for a VSPackage.
When you go there:
http://www.mstoolspartners.com/anonymous/VSIP.aspx
Need help choosing the right
membership level?
Technology Partner Membership
This level focuses on technical
enablement for companies who desire
development assistance with Visual
Studio. Annual fee: $2,000/year
(three-year contract)
Preview the Microsoft Development
Tools Technology Partner contract
Alliance Membership
This level provides technical
enablement as well as a base business
and marketing relationship with
Microsoft. Annual fee: $3,000/year
(three-year contract)
In recent years (i.e. since about 2003), you do not need to pay anything to Microsoft to ship a Visual Studio extension. The information you're looking at is outdated.
Today, the 'paid' VSIP program is only really for companies and groups that want additional marketing and technical benefits for supporting their Visual Studio extension.
To get a VSPackage to load properly in VS2002 - 2008, you do need a Package Load Key (PLK), but it's now just a matter of filling out a simple publicly accessible web form to get one (no payment or login required): http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/cc655795

Can I develop a personal app for Windows Phone 7 without going through the App Store?

I want to develop an app for my own use only for Windows Phone 7. Can I do it without going through the app store? As in from my PC straight to the phone using USB?
You can do this, up to a limit of 10 apps loaded at a time (presumably per marketplace account).
You need to have an active marketplace subscription to deploy directly to the phone.
As of late 2011, you can unlock your phone for $9 in order to install your own applications: http://www.winrumors.com/windows-phone-chevronwp7-unlock-now-available-homebrew-apps-come-alive/
Enterprise or out-of-market app deployment is not available as part of the initial release:
There won't be the ability [at launch] to distribute applications outside the marketplace," Bigg said. "But we are looking into how we enable other [app deployment] scenarios in the future.
No. You are required to have a AppHub account to unlock your device before you can deploy any applications.
An AppHub account is available for Students for FREE through the Microsoft Dreamspark initiative and $99 USD annual subscription for commercial or individual developers. For more information about AppHub read this article.
So you have two options**:
register at an education provider, perhaps in an advanced programming or CS unit.
pay the USD$99 for the annual subscription and publish your applications to the store either as free or try to recoup the investment of the subscription and your time.
** actually you have three options but I will not discuss the third one here...

Resources