On the bad news front, somebody has produced a proof of concept program that steals every one of those programs, free or paid for, from the Windows Phone Marketplace and downloads them for you to use free of charge.  Admitted no Windows Phone has enough installed memory to run them all, and who would want to, but for those few people who like pirating stuff and getting everything for free, this will be tempting.

Fortunately the developer of the hack is actively working with Microsoft on this to block the hack and the beginning of the new year should see changes made to the underlying architecture of the Marketplace which will see this blocked.  This is a white hat hack and will not be released into the wide world.

What’s concerning though is that Microsoft have, for their online services at least, a formidable reputation for security.  Hotmail has only faced 1 or 2 major exploits in its entire 15 year life and their server products and server security products are better than they’ve ever been before.

This crack for the marketplace was apparently put together very quickly and easily however, which raises serious questions about Microsoft’s security for the marketplace.  It’s not just apps that are kept here but details of the app developers, including financial information used to transfer royalty payments to them.

Hopefully Microsoft will act quickly over this holiday period to avoid a serious data leak.  In the mean time a video demonstrating the software used to crack the marketplace is available at NeoWin.

The seal of approval, that was carried in a banner across the top of boxes for games that participated in the programme, was intended to convey that the game had been tested by Microsoft and would work happily, but also that it would integrate with the Games Explorer in Windows Vista and Windows 7.  Here it could be launched easily and the games explorer could also handle extras for you such as parental controls, patches and updates.

Sadly it was let down by poor support from the games industry, but today Microsoft are relaunching the brand, as reported by CNet, and wants gamers to know that Microsoft is serious about PC gaming.

A new Games for Windows Marketplace will allow people to buy games via download from the Internet.  There are about 100 games available so far but Microsoft is very keen to turn Games for Windows into a full-on gaming app store.

The store will also integrate with the Xbox and Zune stores and allow gamers to use points they have collected in the new store to purchase content.  People can also pay by credit and debit card if they so wish.

Such is the case with the mobile smartphone application market. While it may seem odd to some, Apple wasn’t the first in the mobile app marketplace niche. The credit for this idea actually goes to Helio and their original Ocean. But where the Ocean lacked Apple built on and was able to claim the spot as the most successful smartphone application marketplace to date. This of course has led to many others copying their pattern in one form or another and while all the major players in the smartphone market have released their forms of application markets, albeit some are still beta, Microsoft is still left out of that bunch.

Recently, mobiFrance sat down with Audrey Zolghadr, Windows Mobile Product Manager for Microsoft’s French headquarters. While the interview went over quite a few things many of us already knew about Microsoft’s intentions to dominate the mobile marketplace once again, it did shed some light on a few factors that could really help Microsoft in their quest for this dominance.

Although the iPhone has passed Windows Mobile in recent months, (quarterly sales), Microsoft still remains in the top three in overall market share in the smartphone industry. As Audrey Zolghadr pointed out, Windows Mobile has over 20,000 apps currently available for the Windows Mobile OS. That said, Apple confirmed back in February of this year that after 7 months in the mobile application market it has over 20,000 apps available in the iTunes App Store. You might also remember that they recently crossed the 1 billion app download mark.

So how does that fit in with Windows Marketplace? Well for one, when the App Store launched back on July 11th 2008 it only had 500 apps that were approved. Audrey Zolghadr has confirmed that 600 will be available when Microsoft launches Windows Marketplace. It should be noted though that not all apps will appear to every Windows Mobile user. The apps shown on the marketplace will depend on certain things such as screen resolution etc.

But still Microsoft has an advantage here as they have more Windows Mobile phones circulating then Apple has iPhone’s. Since this is coming to an already established platform it shouldn’t be a surprise why analysts are expecting some pretty impressive numbers, and if the recent news about the Palm webOS App Catalog has taught us anything lately, people are app crazy no matter what is out there.
Given the new invigoration pumped into the Windows Mobile platform by partners such as HTC, Sony and more recently Samsung it is going to be interesting to see how this translates to the Marketplace success. Audrey Zolghadr acknowledges that themes, backgrounds etc. will be available for download VIA the Marketplace, so users will be able to change and customize the OS UI on the fly.

Zolghadr has also stated that the Windows Marketplace will be coming sometime this fall. She points out that Windows Mobile has been changed to Windows Phone and reflects the integration of all the different mobile services including MyPhone, Live (Messenger, Spaces, Hotmail etc) and of course Marketplace.

While I am yet to call this a success on the part of Redmond, it is going to be interesting to see what happens come this fall and next year as Windows Mobile (er… Windows Phone 7.0) is released in the coming year.