As we saw at the beginning of this week, the number of apps on the Windows Phone 7 marketplace hit 20,000, but a number of them were considered spam apps by developers. An example of this was a real estate application which was essentially the same but altered slightly to suit different areas of the United States.
In a recent blog post by Todd Brix, a developer working on the platform, he admitted that those submitting their applications in bulk were degrading the customer"s experience of browsing through the thousands of more useful apps. Effective immediately, he says, the marketplace will have a limit of only being able to publish 20 applications in a day in an effort to make the marketplace a balance of quality and choice.
Many developers have complained that the "bulk submissions" have been decreasing the potential amount of views that their work might otherwise receive. With this change in submission rules, the response so far has been relatively positive.
Microsoft has also stated that they"re going to get in contact with those that submit a substantial amount of applications to advise them on how better to combine functionality into fewer or one app. This comes as many of the recent bulk submissions are being removed from the marketplace due to the pressure of developers and those claiming Microsoft is using the situation to boost marketplace figures.