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Micorosoft lead the pack with IE 6 for years until Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome all stepped onto the field to blow it away and MS has been struggling to catch back up ever since... and in true MS fashion, they've done the same with mobile as well. Microsoft Windows Mobile was the best mobile software around until Blackberry came around and even then, it still had the best applications... then along came the Iphone, then Android and Microsoft Windows Mobile has been playing catch up ever since...

First they released Microsoft My Phone in an attempt to finally have the online sync support that every other smart phone user has come to expect and now, they have Microsoft Marketplace.... does it offer the level of features and content that smart phone users have come to expect??

I downloaded Microsoft Marketplace knowing full well that it wouldn't have over 10,000 apps like Android boasts, much less 100's of thousands like Apple's Iphone... but I did at least expect to see a good selection, a good amount of new stuff, a good amount... in general. I was wrong.

App Listings

Microsoft Marketplace has the same stuff that's always been on their "Access" site and even then, it doesn't have it all. It's like they just added in a bunch of them and released the product without being finished yet. A lot of the programs I've installed in the past from their site are still on their site, but not in the marketplace listings.

The biggest category is "Games" with a whopping 29 apps, so you can imagine just how little the other categories have. Now, I don't expect there to be thousands, as I said, because it was just released but frankly there is so very little available that I don't think it should have even been released yet. It just feels like they rushed it to release just to get it out there and didn't care that there's no real reason to use it yet.

Prices

I browsed through every category I could see listed and even though there wasn't a lot of apps, I was hoping to find some free stuff that I could give a test run and see what kind of quality apps they're putting out there... unfortunately, the only free apps listed were the 3 apps I already had installed from their Access site... facebook, myspace and windows live.

Every app they have listed costs money, ranging from a dollar something to over thirty dollars. Even the "light" app which turns your phone into a flashlight costs money. They have a few good ones on there, like SPB's mobile shell and Shazam (the listen and identify musica app) but again, they are trials which will eventually cost you.

Design/Usability

Windows has obviously abandoned their stylus/menu system and opted for the finger friendly approach FINALLY but have gone way overboard. The fonts and letters are rather massive, fitting a whopping 4 lines per screen... even the biggest thumb in the world doesn't need menu items that large. There's no real 'design' to speak of, more of a big clean way of laying things out... which generally I really like, when done right (think Apple Mac ads), but in this case... it just looks like it was done by some guy with his first copy of Windows Visual Studio. It's functional and easy to use but it does not look great and leads to a LOT of scrolling.

Summary

Long story short on this is that I was very disappointed. It took me all of a minute and a half to look through everything, including reviews, I did more finger scrolling than anything else and in the end, I had no new apps installed. It's still very early on and we all know that there are thousands of Windows Mobile apps out there to be discovered so maybe one day, they'll all find their way into the marketplace and it'll become something worthwhile... not a real "competitior" in the app world but at least something usable.... but for right now, it shouldn't even be available yet. It looks like a beta of a beta of an unfinished test product that only has some test data plugged into it. Install it if you want to see what it might become but if you're looking for some good free apps like you'd find on Android or Iphone....  it's not worth wasting your time....  yet.