Today’s an especially great day to be a developer. We’re very excited to announce the last significant milestone in the rollout of the Windows Store before the general availability of Windows 8 on October 26. The Store is now open for app submissions from all developers – individuals and companies – in our supported markets, and we’ve added 82 more app submission markets! Now, developers from 120 markets can publish Windows Store apps. Ted Dworkin, Partner Program Manager for the Store, authored this post.
--Antoine
At every major Windows 8 development milestone – Release Preview, Consumer Preview, RTM – we’ve added markets toward our commitment to a truly global offering. We often hear from those who don’t yet have support in their market, and we’ve said we’ll keep expanding. Today’s 82 additional markets more than doubles our support toward enabling developer opportunity everywhere there’s a developer with desire. And as we’ve said before, we will just keep going. You can check out the complete list of supported markets on the Dev Center.
We’re also announcing a number of additional subscription program offerings that recognize and thank developers for their interest and commitment to Windows. All eligible MSDN subscribers receive a free, one-year Windows Store developer account as part of their MSDN benefits. (Eligible subscriptions include Visual Studio Professional, Test Professional, Premium, Ultimate, and BizSpark.) We have a program for students—DreamSpark—that similarly waives the subscription fee. And we have an offer for businesses in our BizSpark program, as well.
Throughout the Windows Store preview stages, we’ve seen fantastic interest from individual developers, large development houses and component and service providers. And as we’ve opened up new markets for onboarding and expanded our invitations, we’ve seen a great increase in both the number and diversity of apps—all during our preview milestones, before broad availability of the OS and before even the first production Windows 8 PC is in the market. And the Windows 8 PCs are on the way, with many unveiled recently at IFA.
If you’ve already signed up—fantastic. We’re ready for your app. Haven’t signed up yet? Getting started is easy—just go to the Windows Store Dashboard on the Windows Dev Center and sign up. The dev tools are free, the SDK is ready, and we have a ton of great supporting content to help you build your app and submit it for Store certification. Sign up now, reserve your app names—we look forward to seeing your app in the Store in time for the general availability of Windows 8.
--Ted