News

New Microsoft Store App Repository To Launch on Oct. 5

• By Kurt Mackie
• 09/29/2021

Microsoft announced this week that its new Microsoft Store site will launch on Oct. 5, alongside new Windows 11 and Office 2021 product releases.

The new Microsoft Store will have support for Windows 10 users, in addition to Windows 11. However, the Windows 10 support will be arriving later and will be available "in the coming months," the announcement indicated.

Microsoft is billing this revamped store as an "open Store for an open platform," meaning that it supports apps built on various application development platforms.

Support for Other App Stores and Browser Engines
The new Microsoft Store will even house the app stores of other software developers. For instance, it'll soon be getting Amazon and Epic Games store content.

"Today, we are sharing that Amazon and Epic Games will bring their storefront apps to the Microsoft Store over the next few months, and we look forward to welcoming other stores as well in the future," stated Giorgio Sardo, general manager of Microsoft Store, in the announcement.

The Microsoft Store will support other browser engines, as well.

"Today we are welcoming two browsers, joining Microsoft Edge in the Microsoft Store on Windows: Opera and Yandex Browser," Sardo indicated.

Platform and Progressive Web App Support
The new Microsoft Store is an online application repository that can house apps based on different platforms.

The new store can house Android apps, and even older Win32 (Windows 7-era) apps. Examples of app frameworks supported in the new Microsoft Store include .NET, Universal Windows Platform, Xamarin, Electron, React Native, Java and Progressive Web Apps.

Progressive Web Apps for Windows are already available in the new Microsoft Store. They include Reddit, Wikipedia, TikTok, Lyft, Quizlet and Tumblr, plus Microsoft's own newly acquired Clipchamp video editor.

Some desktop applications in the Microsoft Store can be tried today on the Windows 11 preview. Here's Microsoft's list:

• Communication platforms: Discord, Zoom Cloud Meetings and KakaoTalk
• Creativity tools: Luminar AI, Music Maker and VLC
• Desktop productivity applications: TeamViewer, Adobe Acrobat Reader DC and LibreOffice
• Microsoft solutions: Microsoft PowerToys, Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio Community

New Store Dev Perks
The new Microsoft Store is friendly to software developers that sell applications from their own Web sites. It'll be possible to download apps from the store via a pop-up installer, which will appear when users click the app publisher's site link.

Microsoft has indicated that it won't charge software publishers if they use their own commerce platform to monetize their apps, or if they use another software vendor's commerce platform. In such cases, apps can be housed in the new Microsoft Store without any fee.

Microsoft Store for Business To End
In other matters related to Microsoft's app repositories, Microsoft had indicated back in July that its Microsoft Store for Business and Microsoft Store for Education will be ending "in the first quarter of 2023." 

The Microsoft Store for Business and Microsoft Store for Education aren't commerce sites. They are used by organizations to distribute applications to end users. However, Microsoft wants these store users to shift to the Microsoft community repository instead, using the Microsoft Package Manager command-line tool.