Publishing Your Application in the Marketplace
Silverlight quickstart for Windows Phone development
The Windows Phone Marketplace enables you to publish your application so that others can download and install it. You submit your application for publication through the App Hub, where it goes through a certification process to ensure that it meets the requirements. When the application is certified, marketplace pages are generated for display on the phone and in the Zune software.
The following image shows how an application's marketplace page appears in Zune.
There are numerous resources on how to use the marketplace, so this QuickStart simply summarizes the key requirements and provides a quick guide to the other resources. You should consult the official resources listed at the end of this topic if you have any questions.
This QuickStart contains the following sections:
Marketplace Submission Process
Before you can submit your application for publication, you must do the following:
- Purchase an App Hub subscription. For more information, see membership. An App Hub subscription is also required to test your application on an actual device.
- Create a final, release build of your application and test it thoroughly. For more information, see Deploying and Testing on a Physical Windows Phone Device.
- Create application images for display in the marketplace, as described in the next section.
- Select a category and subcategory. For more information, see the category lists in the FAQ.
- Select an application price. Your application can be free or you can charge anywhere from $0.99 to $499.99, of which you get 70%. For more information, see the pricing FAQ. You can also offer a free trial version with the option to buy later. For more information, see Creating Trial Applications for Windows Phone.
- Define the following metadata for your application: unique name, display title, version number, detailed description, keywords, website and license URLs, and support email address. For more information, see the App Hub Application Submission Walkthrough.
When you have completed these tasks, you can submit your application, images, and metadata using the App Hub submission page. If you have gathered all the requirements, the submission process should not take long. However, you are not required to complete the process in a single session; App Hub will save your place after each step.
If your application does not meet the certification requirements, you will be emailed a report of the issues discovered so that you can fix the problems and resubmit. If it passes the test, it will be published automatically if you chose that option in the last step of the submission process. Alternately, you can publish it from your app list at a time of your choosing.
You can track the downloads of your application on your reports page. For more information, see the reporting FAQ. If you charge for your application, you will receive monthly payouts as long as you have met a $200 payout threshold. For more information, see the payout FAQ.
Application Images
When you submit your application, you can provide several images for display on your marketplace application page. These images represent the first impression of your application that potential users will receive, so you should spend some time making sure that they look good. You can find royalty free artwork on the Internet or you can have artwork created by a designer.
You will need the following images for your application page in the marketplace.
Note
Do not use transparent PNG image files for the following images.
| Image | Size (pixels) | File Type |
|---|---|---|
| Small phone application tile icon. This is the icon you include with your application for display in the app list on the phone. | 99 x 99 | PNG |
| Large phone application tile icon. This is the icon you include with your application for display when the user pins the app to the Start screen on the phone. | 173 x 173 | PNG |
| Large application image for display on your marketplace page. | 200 x 200 | PNG |
| Background image for your marketplace page. | 1000 x 800 | PNG |
| Page screenshots (at least 1, up to 8) for display on your marketplace page. | 480 x 800 | PNG |
For information about how to create screenshots using the Windows Phone emulator, see How to: Create Screenshots for Windows Phone Marketplace.
Additional Information
For detailed information about all aspects of application submission, certification testing, hosting, marketing, updating, payment processing, and reporting, see the following resources:
- App Hub Application Submission Walkthrough, which provides a detailed descriptions of all steps of the submission process.
- Windows Phone Application Certification Requirements, which provides the comprehensive and official list of all requirements for publishing an application in the marketplace.
- FAQ: Answers at a Glance, which highlights the most common questions about the submission process.
- App Hub Questions for Windows Phone, which provides the complete FAQ answering numerous questions about every aspect of application submission.
- Publishing Applications to the Windows Phone Marketplace, which is an MSDN topic that summarizes the required steps.
- Publishing Your Application, which is the final section of Building a Windows Phone Application from Start to Finish. This topic is a more detailed version of the current QuickStart, and includes more information on application testing, performance optimization, and certification requirements.
- Interacting with Windows Marketplace, which is chapter 7 of the Patterns and Practices Windows Phone Developer Guide. This topic provides detailed descriptions of marketplace processes and includes information on displaying advertisements within your application.
