Microsoft still paying developers big bucks to build apps for Windows phones

The appeal of smartphones to a lost of consumers is the wide variety of apps they can download. But developers won’t build apps for a platform until there is a proven consumer demand. It’s a chicken and egg problem, and to solve it, Microsoft is paying through the nose to have developers make top apps for Windows phones.

According to a report in the NY Times, Microsoft is willing to pay anywhere from $60,000-$600,000 to subsidize development of the most popular mobile apps. It currently has around 70,000 apps compared to Androids 400,000 and Apple’s 600,000. But it’s missing a number of big name apps like Pandora streaming music, Instagram’s photo sharing service, and Zynga’s casual games.

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It’s not all bad news for Microsoft. The article quotes Ben Lamm, who runs the app development studio Chaotic Moon. “We’re starting to get requests from firms that want a Windows Phone app,” he told the NY Times. “It’s still only 5 to 10 percent of our total requests, but very different than a year ago, when only Microsoft was calling us to do work.”

As my colleague Devindra Hardawar reported recently, Microsoft and Nokia have also invested $24 million in the AppCampus program, which offers comprehensive training and support for developers working on apps for Windows 7 and Nokia’s Symbian operating system. If money isn’t enough to woo developers, perhaps a promise of fun times at nerd college will do the trick.