Marco beat me to it when it came to putting up a screenshot of the as-yet-to-be-unveiled “Windows ® Marketplace for Mobile”
(Microsoft Windows® Marketplace for Mobile for the Corp Enterprise?)

Now, it has been known for a while that Microsoft would be putting up some application purchase/download portal. No doubt being spurred on by the efforts from the makers of the iPhone and the Android, but the time was ripe for something like this regardless of the competition. When you have one of the largest developer communities for a mobile platform it’s only natural to be an enabler for this community in reaching the user base.

Just like Marco I’d like to know what the impact is for enterprise deployments of Windows Mobile. Having users download and install what they like? Don’t think so… Granted you do already have different options for blocking user-initiated installs, and they will most likely still apply. If it’s based on connecting to a web site you can perform tricks like blocking the address as well.

But what I’d really like is an enterprise version of the marketplace. You probably don’t need a payment mechanism, and all the same aspects of the portal, but there is great value in offering pre-approved utilities and applications that the user can selectively choose to install. (In fact I’m working on a concept like this currently.) If you’re running SCMDM you already have WSUS so the infrastructure is in place. And the available applications would preferably be based on group membership in Active Directory. Interesting indeed.

These thoughts must surely have crossed the mind of a Microsoft employee or two as well (at least I hope so). So while we do not know much at the moment we’ll see in a couple of months time what the Marketplace turns out to provide.

On a side note – I am also looking to learn more about this offering from the developer side of things as well. I hope to be able to do an experiment by uploading an application to this “cloud”. Don’t know what kind of application it will be yet, or if it will be a free offering. It’s just as interesting just to learn how large a crowd one is able to reach. (Media tells of all these successful tales of young coders making it big on the iPhone, but I’m unsure of this concept.)