As previously announced by Microsoft, the online “desktop” web version of the service is now also available. I will briefly go through the different features and also recap with a nice comparison to the other application store fronts available on the marketplace today for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Nokia, WebOS, Samsung.
Windows Marketplace for Mobile on the web
The main login page is here: http://marketplace.windowsphone.com. And looks like this once you have signed on with your Live account:
You can easily drill down into any application and see the details, reviews and screenshots.
Features
Perhaps the most interesting is if you click on the “Purchase History” label at the top you can visually see all of your previous purchases, freebie or otherwise:
You can drill down into each purchase and see the additional details:
The “Account Settings” tab brings up an easy to use place to change your payment preferences. You can have different ones either for the phone or the web site.
The “Community” link brings you over to the Windows phone Forums, where there is also one for the Marketplace.
Filtering
Without signing into your Live account, or if you have never setup Marketplace on your Windows Mobile device(s) you can still view all the applications available. You can filter the available application for the 2 device types, Professional (touch screen), or Standard (non-touch screen) in the top right hand corner of the screen:
Language Selection
One last perhaps interesting tidbit I noticed, is that if you don’t sign-in you can actual select which language filter you wish to display the available Marketplace applications. In the bottom right corner there is a “Select Catalog” drop down:
Perhaps interesting to see the differences in the amount of available applications in certain languages just like they have been reported on the portable devices..
Quick Comparison to 7 Competitors
In the world of mobile application store fronts the monetary success of Apple’s iTunes store simply can not be ignored. So not just the operating system vendors are jumping on this bandwagon. Many mobile operators, and now OEM’s are also getting onboard. More competition is usually healthy for the consumer or enterprise customer. So it is definitely interesting times we are in. 
Apple
The Apple iPhone folks actually have multiple avenues nicely packaged for them:
Web Apps: http://www.apple.com/webapps/ – Provides an overview of some of the 1700+ applications you don’t have to install on the iPhone, but uses a plain Internet URL to access them. Most are optimized for the specific iPhone screen size and Safari browser.
iTunes Store: http://www.apple.com/itunes/ – No native web interface to access the store. You must install the iTunes application, but can browse without a configured device. With it’s 100,000+ applications for the iPod Touch/iPhone the current defacto leader inthe mobile space. The newer Genius feature, where application picks based upon your current installation of application is very clever and surprising attractive..
For another interesting view of the iTunes App Store, be sure to check out the “App Store Wall”. Originally shown at the Apple WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference) in the summer of 2009. It provides a live view of the top 20,000 applications and their live activity of purchases on twenty 30” monitors. Better screen shots here. It is now on display at Apple’s Cupertino, CA corporate office in the main lobby..
Blackberry
The RIM Blackberry folks have the launched their “Blackberry App World” earlier this year. It has a nice open web access to view it’s contents as well: http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/.
Several different filters and views to drill down into the applications you are interested in. A nice touch is the RSS feed on the featured applications.
Android
The Android Market web site appears not to be a full view into all the available applications. Just the featured, and top paid and free applications are highlighted. For the free applications, they can be filtered by 16 sub-categories.
Only screenshots and a brief description are made available. Hopefully some more development and feature will be added in the near future. Only a few months in life it clearly needs some more work..
Nokia
Nokia lunched it’s application store front back in May of 2009. It’s called “Ovi Store”, and was supposely launched with more than 20,000 applications in it’s back pocket to give it a boost from the get-go. Looking at the other platforms, probably not a bad decision for a mature platform to get it going.
However the web interface is not geared for desktop web viewing, even though it does pulls up in a fairly readable way: https://store.ovi.com/.
Ovi is already a cloud service for the Nokia platform, much like Apple’s MobileMe, or Microsoft’s MyPhone services. Nokia is also dabbling in the multimedia space with their own Nokia Music Store.
webOS
The Palm webOS application store is named “Palm App Catalog”. Tied to the public SDK releases for the operating system the App Catalog is coming up with a slow start it appears. Full support for paid apps appears to be coming up in December, where more developers and companies might have been waiting for to gain access into this well thought out platform.
No direct web accessible version of the Palm App Catalog so far, without using a webOS device itself. Although the application page on Palm’s web site gives a good glimpse of the top featured applications in 16 different categories.
The newly available Palm Pixi device running webOS does indeed look interesting and may push this platform into the application boom it probably deserves..
Samsung
Samsung is calling their own version simply “Application Store”. Limited to the United Kingdom, Italy and France at this time. Perhaps not a global or even regional play at this point in time, but shows their interest and willingness to have a full fledge “store” solution.
Samsung is borrowing heavily from the Apple playbook and created their own iTunes type application they are calling “Samsung Kies”. Installed on your desktop you can sync applications and browse for applications. On the device side, it appears they are catering this mainly to the Omnia line of devices running Windows Mobile at this time. But Samsung is a multi-platform OEM company and has not been shy to announce future Android and Symbian handsets coming out soon.
Verizon
One of the first larger mobile operators (United States-wise) to go public this summer that they want to have their own branded store front on their devices is Verizon. They are adding a new twist to this new frontier that only their own application store will be initially made available on the handsets sold by them to their customers. Customers can download and install the vendor store application (RIM, Microsoft, etc) but this is again a sign of the monetary gains at stake with mobile applications and stores.
The “VZAppZone” is already live and appears only Windows Mobile and RIM devices have been supported in the beginning.
BTW, for consumer LG devices sold by Verizon there is a whole other “Media Store” where ringtones, music, games, applications and wallpapers can be purchased and downloaded. Some with monthly usage fees. So a mobile operator driven store is nothing foreign to them and only natural to expand to more platforms and devices in their portfolio.
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