Microsoft’s plans to bridge the Windows Phone app gap exposed through leaked slides

Windows Phone’s lack of top applications has often been a deal breaker for many customers looking for a long-term phone. It seems however, that Microsoft has plans to address the issue. ZDNet has managed to secure a few slides from Microsoft’s marketing group that show the company setting aside $10 million to “ring-fence” app developers who are responsible for big name applications such as Pandora, Bump and Instagram who also are not building Windows Phone versions of their apps.

According to the slides as well, is that instead of focusing on quantity, Microsoft has chosen to favour quality. Moreover, they want to highlight built-in Windows Phone functionality and tie exclusive apps to appropriate devices so that they can capitalise on exclusivity with ways to price games at parity with those available on iOS which has been a target for criticism. It still remains to be seen if the big name  developers would consider joining up with Microsoft to fulfil their wants but Microsoft aims to “close all gaps in top 25 apps” by the end of Q2, 2012.