Do you remember that kid in your neighborhood that had to let the other kids ride his bike or play any of his Atari games (or, if you prefer, Nintendo) in order to get them to play with them? If so, this story will seem familiar to you.
Bloomberg Businessweek is reporting that in a bid to catch up to the runaway success of Apple's App Store, Microsoft is dangling a carrot of financial incentive in front of App Developers to build software for their Windows 7 Mobile platform. According to Bloomberg, the Redmond-based tech behemoth is offering free development software, test handsets, and even revenue guarantees to developers in order to ensure that a respectable number of applications from all categories are available to consumers should they choose to adopt the hardware that supports the platform when it becomes available later this year. This varies greatly from Apple's App Store business plan, in which Apple and an application's development team each take a share in the profits made as a result of an application being purchased.
The news comes hot on the heels of the Microsoft announcement that they were cancelling their seemingly hipster and social media-centric Kin line of handsets mere weeks after the device became available to the public.
