Hundreds of Windows Phone 7 Apps Made at Bandung Institute of Technology

Microsoft’s (NASDAQ:MSFT) ‘Innovation Center’ at the Bandung Institute of Technology (MIC-ITB) has linked up with Nokia (HEL:NOK1V; NYSE:NOK) and another partner to get Indonesian developers coding for the Windows Phone 7 (WP7) platform. And that has led to the creation of hundreds of locally-made WP7 apps that you could soon check out.

The initiative was centred on the MIC-ITB Code Camp 2011 for WP7, in which Microsoft Indonesia, Navcor Nextology, and Nokia set a target of 200 mobile applications to be created by local developers.

The training-oriented event, which was attended by 230 university students and mobile technology developers, lasted from November 22 until November 24 as a part of the Digital Media Festival 2011. Organisers claim it was the biggest mobile application training/coding event ever. In this workshop, the participants were also taught how to develop applications and games that are cost efficient, using a cloud computing infrastructure. Plus, the participants were coached in how to market the games and applications as well.

Hundreds of apps that resulted from this workshop are set to be available through the Windows Phone Marketplace for Indonesians to download and use. Nokia has been really pushing developers to make apps for Windows Phone so that the Marketplace can improve and expand ahead of the arrival of WP7-powered Nokias in the region.

Fighting Off Android and iOS in Asia

Based on research by Appcelerator and IDC, application developers around the world claim to be more interested in developing mobile apps for WP7 now compared to their previous enthisiasm for Microsoft’s defunct WinMo 6. The Windows Phone platform got as much as a 38 percent vote of confidence/intention from 2,160 developers that said they are really interested to develop an app in Windows Phone. Both MS and Nokia need this to come to fruition so as to prevent Android and iOS reaching the same kind of critical mass in Asia that it has already done in Europe and the US.

Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) iTunes App Store was introduced in 2008 and has now amassed more than 500,000 apps up tp October 2011. While the Android Market has no formal approval/testing system for apps – and claims to be more open – but has just 300,000 apps so far. What of WP7? Well, the newly introduced Windows Phone MarketPlace (in October 2010) has 40,000 applications from 10,000 application developers all across the world.

[Source: Detikinet]