Microsoft has rebranded its mobile app store, and at the same time announced the latest innovations in it: a heavily modified search engine, the addition of Top Free and Top Paid categories.
From now on, the Windows Phone Marketplace app store is called easily and simply – Windows Phone Store. Thus, Microsoft has achieved the harmony of the names of the former Marketplace with the app store for Windows 8. So now there are Windows 8 Store and Windows Phone Store. The main thing is not to confuse them. However, this is not a trivial task, since from now on they have similar not only names, but also logos.
But this is not the biggest innovation of the Windows Phone Store.
Search in the market now uses the Bing search engine, so now you can make mistakes in the name of applications (Facebok was introduced instead of Facebook – it’s okay, the robot will understand you). He also started looking for apps not only by name, but also by relevance. Moreover, the search engine is able to search for applications not only throughout the market, but also exclusively in a user-defined category.
The showcase has changed a lot, new categories have appeared in the store: Top Free, Top Rated and Best Rated (the latter category includes applications that have not only received high ratings from users, but are also actively launched by them, that is, their actual usage is taken into account).
Also, the Windows Phone Store has started recommending apps based on previously made downloads and the interests of a particular user.
Yes, the new games will no longer have a “shortcut” Xbox LIVE Windows Phone. Now it’s just an Xbox Windows Phone. It seems that the gradual abandonment of the word LIVE in the names of many Microsoft services, promised in the spring by the director of the Windows division Steven Sinofsky, is taking real shape.