This Is How Microsoft Could Easily Boost User And Developer Engagement‏

Nobody is arguing that Microsoft’s mobile platforms, tablets and phones, are lacking some developer engagement.
Yes, the picture looks better than a year ago, but still, there is a lot to be desired. While many big brands are already offering apps for Windows Phone, there is one area where it looks as bad as ever: The hip newcomers.

Every startup that has to decide where to launch their new app. They will never choose to launch in the Windows Store first (unless they are some kind of Microsoft App Campus Startup). At best, Windows is a “coming soon”-afterthought. And why should it be different? The platform isn’t offering anything groundbreaking that would outweighs the massively smaller market share.

I will now pitch my idea to change this. An idea which is in my opinion capable to change the balance of power in the app store landscape. It will drive developer interest and engagement and therefore will lead to better apps and ultimately to a better user engagement and experience.
I pitch it towards Microsoft, because I’m convinced that a trinity in the mobile space will better for the user than the current duopoly. And I’m a fanboy.

Nano-Transactions

Allow developers to receive In-App-Purchases in the realms of 1 to 49 cents. Take “Maleficent Free Fall” as example for a game which could make very good use of nano-transactions:
In this “connect 3+” game you have five lifes. When you cannot win a level, you loose a life. Every 30 minutes you recover a lost life ‘till the maximum of five. If all life are use up, you can buy five new life for 99 cents. Even though I’m in level 170 and I was very often in the situation that I had to wait for a new life, I never paid for them. But if I had had the chance to buy one life for 5–10 cents, I often would have paid this ultra-low fee to keep gaming.

The same goes for all the endless-runner games — first continue for 5¢, second for 10¢, third for 20¢… — I think you get my point.

Other use cases could be

• remove the ads for a week for 20¢,
• a monthly subscription of 10¢ or
• tip the programmer a small amount.

We consumers are often stupid — ähh, I mean, sometimes we are not the homo economicus we should be — I guess in some instances I and many other people would end up paying more than with the current model. But this is okay, because the individual amounts are so small, something like Buyer’s remorse would probably never kick in.

To reduce processing fees and speed up the nano transaction, it would maybe better to not handle every single transaction by itself. Instead Microsoft could charge 100¢ and add them to your Microsoft account. Of course it would be necessary to allow users to withdraw this money and to warn them the first time they do a nano transaction that it could happen that they’re charged 100¢.

Do It And Do It Now

I think this would be an easy and effective way to boost user and developer engagement on the Windows platforms. The the only problem is, that it’s probably so easy to do, that, if it proves to be successful, Apple and Google could copy this within weeks.
But this point stands for almost every software feature in the world. It is more important for Microsoft to be the first who does this. Only if they offer something before Google and Apple, they have a chance to loose their eternal-third-eternal-late status.

P.S.: Of course, a bullet proof implementation of this feature is the key to success. Don’t pull another Wallet/NFC payment disaster.