Comment by probably_wrong
8 years ago
I wanted to develop for Windows Phone, I really did. I even bought two phones, hoping that my experience with the first one would be fixed with the second.
But I just couldn't: getting the environment to work required me to upgrade my version of Visual Studio, upgrade my version of the OS, pay a developer fee (or send an e-mail with a scan of my ID and grade transcript to get it waived as a student). And even after sorting all those obstacles, the IDE was so buggy that I couldn't even place a date picker object.
The impression I got was: you can develop for WP, as long as you do it the way we like it (OS version, Visual Studio version) and invest about a hundred dollars getting up to spec.
Compared to Android's "here's the free IDE for your OS of choice", I'm not surprised developers weren't thrilled.
But that's how development for iOS is too, probably even worse because you also need to buy the whole computer in order to develop in it (I know there are other ways, I'm just considering the way most developers do). But this model still successfully works for Apple.
Developing for Android is really amazing. But the real deal is the phone's market share. It doesn't matter much how good or crap is your experience creating apps for a specific platform. At the end of the day it's about how many users will be downloading your app. Apple and Android has the market. Windows does not have it.