Microsoft's Windows Phone Jailbreak Partner Considers Calling it Quits

From DailyTech: Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Windows Phone still has a lot of promise for sales success in the smartphone space, but that promise has thus far gone almost wholly unrealized. Still, the company has a loyal contingent of developers that have ensured that while Windows Phone may not rival Google Inc.'s (GOOG) or Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) mega app stores in content numbers, that it at least isn't as anemic in apps as Hewlett-Packard Comp.'s (HPQ) semi-defunct webOS.

But the flow of new developers, the lifeblood sustaining Microsoft's fledgling effort, may be at risk as the company's "official" jailbreak tool has closed shop for the time being.

Like Apple (and unlike Google), Microsoft charges developers a fee to get access to its SDK and applications market. Its asking price is $99 USD per year. Of course for beginning devs this isn't the friendliest approach as it doesn't always make sense to pay $99 USD a year if you don't know XNA/C#/etc., and won't be able to release commercial product for a while.

Rebellious "jailbreakers" came up with the solution -- devise methods to allow the sideloading of unauthorized apps. With the approach, you can grab a copy of the SDK and start programming homebrew apps without having to pay Microsoft its toll. Of course the ultimate goal is to go commercial, so Microsoft still benefits in the long run.

The king of the jailbreakers back in 2010, when Windows Phone launched, was the ChevronWP7 tool. Microsoft initially considered stomping out the jailbreak, but relented, agreeing to make ChevronWP7 team its "official" jailbreakers, for reasons similar to those outlined above.

Microsoft clearly didn't want to let loose an unlimited number of jailbreak licenses, so it and ChevronWP7 team agreed to a token system. Under the system ChevronWP7 would sell a certain number of tokens (licenses) for $9 each, with each token allowing a single Windows Phone handset to be jailbroken for sideloading.

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