Microsoft confirms Windows Store for February

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Microsoft has released details on the Windows Store, confirming it will land alongside the Windows 8 Beta in February 2012.

In the beta period of the store, all apps will be free, as Microsoft confirmed it is not offering support for paid apps during that time.

Microsoft has stuck with the traditional model of offering developers 70 per cent of revenues from sales on the Windows Store, although has announced apps that achieve $25,000 (£16,000) in revenue will get an 80/20 split.

Apple and Google only offer the 70/30 deal for developers.

"So, once an app establishes a bit of success, we increase the revenue share to 80 per cent to reflect and reward that success," said Ted Dworkin, partner programme manager for the Windows Store, in a blog post.

Deployment flexibility ensures that employees have software on the devices they prefer.

"And when you look at the breadth of the Windows customer base, the potential for innovation on the platform and the appeal of new devices that take advantage of these software and hardware advances, we expect an entirely new scale of economic opportunity to be realised for app developers."

The Redmond giant was also keen to reassure IT departments it has thought of them in the development of the store. In particular, it has paid attention to access management.

"Enterprises can choose to limit access to the Windows Store catalogue by their employees, or allow access but restrict certain apps. In addition, enterprises can choose to deploy Metro style apps directly to PCs, without going through the Store infrastructure," Dworkin added.

"For Windows 8 Beta, IT administrators can use group policy to permit Metro style app installations, as long as the apps are signed by trusted publishers and the machines are joined to the domain. Then the IT admin can use powershell commandlets to manage those Metro-style apps on Windows 8."

Not only can IT administrators control the apps directly on the Windows 8 PCs they manage, but they can also manage them across work and home devices, Microsoft said.

"This deployment flexibility ensures that employees have software on the devices they prefer while IT can continue to manage software payloads based on their company’s needs and regulations," Dworkin said.

See below for Microsoft's lowdown on the Windows Store:

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