Hi, Recently I joined some workshops where they introduced some new tools similar to ours in some ways. I still see our buzztouch is great and there are things that they cannot catch up. However, I noticed that now they begin to support Windows Mobile together with iOS and Android. So are we going to be able to support it too ? As I know, Windows mobile is growing fast in US, Japan, and China. There is no reason we standing out of this trend.

As of right now, we have no plans to support Windows mobile. Windows has a really small share of the market, which makes it hard to put many resources into developing it. For instance, take a look at netmarketshare.com (one of the sites that came up toward the top of Google when I searched for "mobile market share"). It shows Windows Mobile makes up 0.56% of total market share for mobile devices.

We did speak to some folk at Microsoft a few months ago, but as Chris said the resources we'd have to throw at it make it a bit of a drain. Not dead in the water per se but not a huge focus right now. I still have to knock people back for Blackberry and say the same things mentioned above. BB dead, windows, well wait and see, never say never.

Good answer! Thanks Bros!

The market share may be small for windows and other mobile platforms, or one might say less saturated then both the ios and android markets that dominate today. Just looking at the recent facebook purchase of whatsapp, you see they support pretty much the top platforms for their messaging app. http://www.whatsapp.com/ So why didn't they just build for iOS and Android, why waste time on the other platforms if they (windows, black berry, etc) have a small market share? A mobile device is a mobile device, they have some form of connectivity, wifi or data plan, they all have (smartphones) native browsers. so if a company like whatsapp can build a native app for these platforms that can connect its messaging application on a multitude of devices, why not? They have nothing to loose, but a lot to gain in acquiring new users for their .99 cent a year service. I wish I knew about this, save me money on my monthly txt plan. Interesting that David Book's webinar yesterday went over how to build a chat application. Time to get the wheels turning. As a developer, I look at it as, why limit myself to 1 or 2 platforms if I have the ability to develop and brand my app on the same top platforms. My app may get lost in the saturated apple and google stores, but if the competition is less on the other platforms, I might as well take advantage and grow as they grow. You just never know. This industry is changing so fast and trying to keep up is a challenge, for me to be diverse in a multitude of skill sets, can be the difference in landing a new client or having a successful app venture. For BT right now you will just have to wait and see. Never say Never. IMO Ed

"They have nothing to lose" - true, Facebook has nothing to lose - no matter what it cost them, it's a drop in the bucket for a company like that. But if you look at Buzztouch, it's a different story. I'd love to brag that we had a billion dollars in the bank to spend however we wanted. Lol. Can you imagine what we could accomplish? Maybe next year. ;) Even for an individual developer like you or I, it's a tough decision to develop for Windows. Yes, there's less competition, but that doesn't necessarily mean more money to be made. You have to weigh the costs of learning how to convert your app to that platform (time is money). If it takes you XX hours because you're learning from scratch, how many iOS/Android apps could you do in that time, and how much would they make you? It might still be worth it, but it's not an easy decision to make.

This is not a comment advocating that "BT should support Windows Mobile or Blackberry". I understand that BT is a small company, it cannot do everything for everybody. A startup should indeed focus on just a few things. David Book, as a brilliant Founder, has bootstrapped a good product. When diving into small markets, one has to have a strategy for standing out, even though there is less competition. One approach is to identify a narrow and specific category of usefulness that your app will provide. Do a fantastic job on that app, it should quickly rise to the top of that narrow category. Here is the cheers for timing and Lady Luck to be in your favor! :-) -- Niraj

True, point taken chris. Who knows, maybe with the stuff BT is working on, like David said at Buzzday, the learning curve and instant gratification on making apps with BT may be a game changer for those newbies and seasoned developers to take advantage of. Let's hope for the best and good fortune to all the developers here.

Still around @TooT Ha. Yip, I agree, always a good idea to think about these things. I remember when Hyper-V was just hitting the market to counter VMWares darn sweet offerings and we were beta testing it for them (well the company I worked for was) Foolish to ever rule Microsoft out, not yet. Still remember the first time I watched the VMWare chaps demo the live migration of a server, constantly pinging it, still accessing email while the entire box moved to a new location. Anyway...... I digress. Don't think the conversation hasn't taken place, there is still an open line of communication with contacts at Microsoft. The old school Dr Who pinball game used to say "now is the time" well maybe it isn't but I still play that pinball game. Blackberry threads used to pop up, they died. Windows threads pop up now more than BB, not often but every 3-4 months. The frequency of these posts answer the question? I like the Windows UI for the most part, not against it and it's a large part of why I think Kittsy's Mosaic plugin is the best outside plugin the BT site has seen. A lot going on in the background from David and the team, good times ahead, lots of new goodness in the pipeline. Windows, who knows. Off now buddy, off to play with a new app. So want this for house. Maybe Christmas this year: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9lIT8v9dlw Peace buddy, Keith

Yeah, Im still watching @Keith! I developed an app for my group and only one of them use Windows mobile, and he asks why don't I have a version for his mobile. So the ratio is about 1:20, its not much request to consider yet, I think. Then at a workshop they showed that their tool can release for iOS, Android and windows mobile, then to my point of view, it is a "WOW!", then can satisfy anybody... So I just want to come back here to check. Anyway, Im here supporting the development of BT! Hope it will come nearer and nearer to its perfection! Peace Bros !

Hey there TooT -- what tool did they use for the trio of mobile platforms? It is always good for us to be aware of the alternatives / competition / possibilities. -- Niraj

You heard of Mobilous ? This guy http://www.mobilous.com/en/index.html

what about leveraging the http://appstudio.windows.com?

Mr. Simon -- I did brief diving into the App Studio forum ... It is active with questions and answers! This particular post on being limited on Text blocks dis-heartened me. I was disappointed the limitations of the simple things such as text blocks! http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/wpapps/en-US/85696ee6-49d0-4dc1-b4e3-b5764d7b8883/rss-limiting-characters-in-the-content?forum=wpappstudio Then the official App Studio Support Team replied with a solution ... But then text wrapping is not ensured. Groan -- that is not a viable solution! Is this the best that professionals folks can recommend? http://blogs.msdn.com/b/stankovski/archive/2013/08/27/yet-another-scrollable-textblock-for-windows-phone.aspx It seems for the simple things, one can do a lot with App Studio ... Just stay within the fences, folks! -- Niraj

Sigh..it's never easy right. the good news is that AS does push out the project that can then be manipulated to your hearts content in Visual Studio. and this is where I was thinking the insertion point to tie in with BT tools/CP could possibly occur

Mr. Simon -- I agree, part of BT's allure is the Control Panel. That is what made me stop looking elsewhere! My crystal ball says that Swift will run on non-Mac and non-iOS platforms within two years -- perhaps initially without a UI, only a CMD line. After all, it is "just" an LLVM compilation. Then either the platform provider or an open-source community could create a UIKit for that "other" platform. Apple has not yet made a decision of "open-source" for Swift. That is good news. That means internal discussions are still swirling. -- Niraj