It appears that old Microsoft is tarting up the Windows Phone Marketplace to pave the way for new apps and features over the coming months, and as such have made a couple of changes already the their app store, although they say most wont notice these couple of changes.

According to the Windows Phone Steam Blog, the first change made is Windows Phone owners wont be able to shop for Windows Phone apps via Zune any longer, as they are removing the Windows Phone apps option from the Zune software; however the Zune HD app store will still be open.

However the Zune software will still be of importance to Windows Phone users for installing such things as updates, purchasing and playing music, and backing up their images, and videos that are stored on their Windows Phone.

The other change is apparently a larger Marketplace improvement effort, apparently if you own a Windows Phone it will be necessary for you to be running Windows Phone 7.5 on your handset in order to update existing apps or purchase and download new apps, so if you are still running an earlier version of Windows Phone you’ll need to update your operating system.

The reason Microsoft are doing this is because as the Marketplace now has over 80,000 apps and available in 54 countries, having handsets running Windows Phone 7.5 is a larger effort in improving Marketplace security and performance, and making way for more features and faster growth.

Thus if you don’t update to Windows Phone 7.5, although you will still be able to browse the store, if you attempt to update and existing app or install a new app or game you’ll get an error message. So if you have a Windows Phone that isn’t running WP7.5 looks like you’d better update and soon.