Several updates regarding Windows Phone Marketplace were announced today on the Windows Team Blog. Free app limit is raised to 100 and a new way to submit apps globally has been announced. The team also announced the future support of additional open source licensing models.

The posting provides more details: An Update on Windows Phone Marketplace; new tips, policies and regional access program.

Limit of Free Apps Raised to 100

We have raised the limit on the number of certifications that can be performed for FREE apps at no cost to the registered developer from five to 100. This was a common request from developers which we are glad to implement after building alternate methods to ensure that users can find and download high quality apps.

Users Like Free Trials

• Users like trials. Paid apps that include trial functionality are downloaded 70 times more than paid apps that don’t include trial functionality, expanding the number of potential customers to purchase the full paid version.
• Trials result in higher sales. Nearly 1 out of 10 trial apps downloaded convert to a purchase and
• generate 10 times more revenue, on average, than paid apps that don’t include trial functionality.
• Trial downloads convert to paid downloads quickly. More than half of trial downloads that convert to a sale do so within one day, and most of those within 2 hours.

About Ads in Your Apps

Many developers are using the Ad Control.

• Roughly ¼ of all registered U.S. WP7 developers have downloaded the free Ad SDK for Silverlight and XNA
• Of ad funded apps in the Marketplace, over 95 percent use the free Microsoft Advertising Ad Control
• Monthly impressions from our Ad Exchange has continued to grow by double digits – impressions increased by nearly 400 percent just since January

To get started, see:

• Create an Ad in a Windows Phone 7 XNA Game App
• Register Ad-Enabled Windows Phone 7 Apps
• Measure Ad Performance of Windows Phone 7 Apps

Also see my ISV video with Johnny Simmons: Teenager Makes Money Writing Windows Phone 7 Apps with AdCenter.

More Open Source Licenses Update

Marketplace Application Provider Agreement (APA) already permits applications under the BSD, MIT, Apache Software License 2.0 and Microsoft Public License. We plan to update the APA shortly to clarify that we also permit applications under the Eclipse Public License, the Mozilla Public License and other, similar licenses and we continue to explore the possibility of accommodating additional OSS licenses.

Global Publisher Program

Developers from countries and regions all over the world can now submit apps and games to the Windows Phone Marketplace under the Global Publisher Program.

Publishers will submit applications to Marketplace on behalf of their developer customers, according to pricing and service terms defined by the Publisher.

About Windows Phone Developers

Windows Phone Marketplace currently offers more than 9,000 quality apps and games and enjoys a base of over 32,000 registered developers, delivering an average of 100 new apps every day. The Windows Phone Developer Tools have now been downloaded more than one million times, and we recently announced an update to let developers take advantage of OS updates such as the addition of copy and paste functionality.

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