We reported this week on the big push being put on right now by Nokia and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft to get some traction in the smartphone market with the Lumia 900, which runs on the Windows Phone platform. Walt Mossberg, the Gandalf of product reviewers, said at the time that while Windows Phone has some 60,000 apps, it’s still far away from the Android and Apple catalogs.
Microsoft, turns out, is still working on that and is still paying developers of major apps to build for the platform.

The New York Times reports that the company is paying between $60,000 and $600,000 per app to major developers, depending on the complexity of the app, to port popular apps to Windows Phone. Desperate? I don’t know. Competitive? Okay, sure. But Microsoft has vast mountains of gold and million dollar bills because of Office being on everyone’s work computer and Xbox being crazy stupid successful. So why not?