>It's been $19/yr for over a year now vs. the $25 one time cost to get into the Play Store. Also free for students and MSDN members.
In fact, Microsoft recently removed the annual fee altogether. The developer subscription is now a one-time charge of $19 [0], which lets you publish apps to both the Windows and Windows Phone stores.
I won't touch any OS made by a company that thinks installing a program that I wrote, on a computer that I bought, is a chargeable service. I suspect many hackers feel the same. It's the principle.
> I believe the fee is there to prevent a malware propagation problem like we have on Android.
Anecdotally, I have had zero problems with malware on Android and I have used Android since 2010, and I have never known anyone to have a problem. Yet you're making it out to be some kind of huge deal, also $19 a year is still more than $0 a year to build your own app for your own hardware. Not being able to side-install apps on other platforms is the sole reason for me using Android, because otherwise I would use iOS which otherwise has the best phones and eco-system period.
I am extremely skeptical that $19/year is significant compared to the value of the resources used to build an app (any app). I realize people can be in situations where getting $19 together at one time can be hard and still be able to develop apps, but that seems like a very corner case.
Anecdotally, I haven't seen an issue around me with malware on Windows either from 2010 (except one person complaining about the Ask toolbar bundled with Java/Flash).
I guess you haven't been looking at the news about Android Malware.
I believe the fee is there to prevent a malware propagation problem like we have on Android.