Microsoft to open its own smartphone store

Microsoft will seek to counter the rising popularity of Apple’s mobile “App Store”, one of the surprise hits of the consumer technology world last year, with the announcement on Monday of plans for a similar service to make it easier to load applications on to smartphones.

Speaking at the opening of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, is also set to announce a new user interface for devices running Microsoft’s software, including “touch” features to rival some of the functions of Apple’s iPhone.

However, with the Microsoft version of an App Store still some way from being launched, and a more complete overhaul of the Windows Mobile platform delayed until next year, the announcements will do little in the short term to counter Apple’s early lead in the latest generation of mobile technology.

“Apple has raised the bar for other device makers and platforms,” said Andrew Lacy, co-founder of Tapulous, maker of the popular Tap Tap Revenge game for Apple’s iPhone.

His comments were echoed by other developers who have flocked to the Apple platform in recent months.

The App Store, launched on iTunes last summer, acts as a store front through which developers can either sell or give away their software, with Apple keeping 30 per cent of any sales. Thanks to its unexpected early success, Apple now makes the App Store a centrepiece of its marketing for the iPhone and the iPod touch, which can also be used to access the store.

Google has responded with the launch of a rival store, known as Android Marketplace, while Research in Motion, maker of the BlackBerry, has said it will have one by this spring.

In a presentation designed to counter the attention that Apple’s iPhone and App Store have won, Mr Ballmer will try to rekindle interest Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform, which is more widely used than Apple’s mobile software, but which has fallen behind technically and in user experience.

Microsoft can count on wide support among developers, thanks to the ubiquity of the Windows operating system. But developers who have scored early success in App Store warn that Microsoft still has a long way to go to match the leap ahead that Apple has taken with the iPhone and the App Store. Also, with a growing number of mobile software platforms, Windows will have to fight for attention.

Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, a mobile music service that has been downloaded more than 3m times from the App Store, said that Apple had “got it right in every dimension”. He added that a number of other platforms, such as the new BlackBerry, Google and Palm smartphones, potentially offered more attraction than a version for Windows Mobile.