Contact Changer at MobiHand
Contact Changer is now available for download at MobiHand!
Due to the Marketplace language/region restictions I’ve received requests from users from countries all around the world about alternative download/purchase locations for Contact Changer. I’ve just uploaded it to MobiHand and can be purchased by either VISA or PayPal.
Marketplace, from a developer perspective
From a developer perspective the Marketplace have some serious issues about upgrading applications. I´ll try to describe my experiences and thoughts.
Additional markets
Due to the fact that applications on the Marketplace needs to be translated into the local language of each market, I got my Contact Changer translated into several new languages. I´m not going to write much about my opinion about this ridiculous limitation but concentrate on how to avoid loosing ratings, reviews and your most popular listings.
The first successful submission of Contact Changer (v1.0) supported norwegian and english. The application was first submitted to the norwegian market and was later published to UK, USA, Singapore and Canada as additional markets. The new version (1.1) also includes swedish, danish, dutch, german and french.
I´ve been following the Marketplace developer forum at MSDN and I noticed that developers reported that their reviews and most popular listings were reset when they upgraded their applications. As my Contact Changer has positive reviews and placed on the most popular list in the norwegian store I could not make up my mind. Would it be profitable to upgrade? Would the new additional markets outnumber the sales I got from being on the most popular list and the positive reviews?
When I looked at the developer dashboard at Marketplace I noticed that all the markets had their own “Upgrade” menu item in the product listing. That´s when I decided to try to upgrade the least successful market to the new version, and then expand with additional markets from the newly upgraded “additional market”.
I submitted the 1.1 upgrade to Singapore, which is my least successful market with under 10 downloads and no reviews. The update was approved. Later i published the upgraded version to France, Netherlands and Germany.
Even though I got away without loosing any reviews, ratings or listings I find it very frustrating. My application is now on the Marketplace in two different versions. 1.0 for Norway, USA, UK and Canada and 1.1 for Singapore, Germany, France and the Netherlands. If I plan to expand with more languages I have to do the same thing again….So if I include italian and polish in my next build and upgrade Singapore to v1.2 , I´ve got three different versions out there! And I don´t want to increase the minor version number for each new language!
And after a while when Singapore has been upgraded to version 1.9 I have to upgrade another market to 1.1 (an update from 1.9 to 2.0 costs a submission credit worth $99)! That makes it even harder to keep track of my versions. Two 1.1 versions with different executables!? Microsoft, what are you thinking!?
Update with new features
So far I´ve written about upgrading with additional languages. Another huge disadvantage with Marketplace is upgrading all your markets to a new version! Let´s say you publish your application to 30 markets. That costs you a submission credit (worth $99) for the first market and 30 x $10 for the additional markets. $399 in total….!!
After a while you get feedback from users about new features that you would love to implement in your application. You spend hours developing and testing the new version and you are finally ready to publish the upgrade! So far so good….. You log into the developer dashboard and submit your upgrade. In a few days your upgrade is approved and published – to 1 of 30 markets! You have to repeat this for each market and submit the exact same CAB each time. You would spend a whole day publishing your update, what a waste of time…And as an extra award (for giving your users new features) all your ratings, reviews and most popular listings are reset!
Compared to the AppStore it feels like Marketplace was designed in 1980. I recently updated my iPhone application with new features. Reviewed in 6 days and distributed to the whole world in 1 second! Come on Microsoft, I bet you can do better!
SMSBank 2.1 approved
SMSBank version 2.1 has just been approved by Apple and it is published to the AppStore.
New features:
Improved startup password validation
The password will be validated on each character input so you don´t need to press OK.
Transfer money to friends
Transfer money to your friends by using a wizard. Supported banks: SkandiaBanken, DnB Privat and Postbanken.
Impressed by Marketplace review times!
On sunday evening I submitted upgrades of both my applications to the AppStore and Marketplace. Contact Changer has been translated to a number of languages and SMSBank has a new feature, transfer money to friends. SMSBank is still waiting for the review by Apple, Contact Changer was reviewed in two days!
When I received the notification of the successful review, I logged in to the Marketplace dashboard and added Germany and France as additional markets. Three hours later I got two new notifications from Microsoft. They had both been approved! Once again I logged in and submitted it to Netherlands. 16 hours later, another successful review and it was ready to be published!
4 reviews in 3 days, I have to say I´m impressed!
I´ll blog another post later about a trick I learned to avoid the fact that reviews and “Most popular” rank are reset when you update an application with additional languages.
Contact Changer in Netherlands
Contact Changer has been approved for the dutch market in Netherlands.
Contact Changer in new markets!
Contact Changer has just been approved by Microsoft for the french and german market!
I’ve also sent a dutch version to Microsoft for approval. Italian translation is done but might take some time since it will require a complete upgrade of the existing application on the Marketplace. I’m hoping to include spanish in the same submission.
Translate Contact Changer
I want to add Contact Changer to additional markets but I need help translating it.
I’m looking for
- Spanish
If you can contribute please follow this link
Contact changer review
Contact changer has been reviewed by BestWindowsMobileApps.
They have even recorded a video that shows how the application works!
Contact changer in Australia
Contact changer has just been approved for the Australian market. It can be downloaded here
Contact changer on Marketplace
Contact changer released on Marketplace for Mobile in Norway, UK, USA, Singapore and Canada.
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Contact Changer
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