The opening of the Windows Phone Marketplace for Windows Phone Mango is drawing near!
We’ve blogged recently about all of all of the amazing new things you can do in Windows Phone ‘Mango’ and we’ve also mentioned that we encourage developers to test their existing applications against the Windows Phone ‘Mango’ tools. As we get closer, some people are asking us: what happens to their existing applications once they submit an update for Windows Phone ‘Mango?’ How will my update appear across the full scope of all Windows Phone users?
When you publish a Windows Phone ‘Mango’ update to an application you had previously published, the following will occur:
- The WP 7.0 version of your application will remain available to all users on WP 7.0 devices.
- The WP ‘Mango’ version of your application will be available to all users on WP ‘Mango’ devices.
- WP ‘Mango’ users who previously installed your application will receive an update notification. This will occur even if they installed your application prior to updating to WP ‘Mango’
- WP 7.0 users who have installed your application, but not updated to WP ‘Mango,’ will not receive an update notification.
- The WP7.0 rankings & reviews that your application received will attach to your new updated WP ‘Mango’ version too.
- The application metadata and screenshots for Windows Phone Marketplace submitted with the WP ‘Mango’ version of your application will be shared across both the WP 7.0 and WP ‘Mango’ versions of the application; i.e., a single set of metadata and screenshots will appear to both WP 7.0 and WP ‘Mango’ users.
- Once you have released the WP ‘Mango’ version of your application, you will no longer be able to modify the previously released WP 7.0 version of your app. We realize that some of you may worry about this limitation, and so we’re actively working on ways to mitigate it. To improve the experience for users, it’s our preference not to have “duplicate versions” of your apps in the marketplace. We are also going to work hard to encourage our pre-existing users to enjoy the free upgrade to Mango as quickly as possible.
Writing your detailed description
Because metadata is now shared across the multiple versions of your application that may be available, you should be very clear when writing, or updating, your detailed description about any features that may be available to users of only one specific version.
For a comprehensive list of the new developer features in Windows Phone ‘Mango’ for which you’d want to do this, see the article ‘What’s New in the SDK’ on the MSDN Library.
We also strongly recommend that in your description, you include a link to our Windows Phone Update Information website, at http://wpupgrade.ms/mangome. This will provide users who have not updated to Windows Phone ‘Mango’ an easy way to get more information about updating their phone and getting access to the Mango version of your app.
Further, if you are publishing a screenshot that demonstrates functionality only available in the ‘Mango’ version of your application, we recommend that you make this very clear by adding a text overlay “WP 7.5 Only” on each appropriate screenshot.
In the screenshot below, we’ve got an example of how you might implement these suggestions in the App Submission page on App Hub.
We’re incredibly excited to start seeing the applications and games that people are building for Windows Phone ‘Mango.’ ‘Mango’ brings a large number of new features to developers that we’re incredibly excited about, like Fast Application Switching, Multiple Live Tiles, Background Agents, Socket support, SQL CE, Camera stream access, and more! We want to make certain that developers have the information they need in order to build and publish applications as quickly as possible! Thank you for your continued support.
Todd Brix
Senior Director, Windows Phone Marketplace
