WP Market Place on 35k, Over half of Android devices sold now under MS licence

WMPoweruser reports that the Windows Phone Market Place has reached the 35,000 mark. The last milestone of 30k was reached about 7 weeks ago and WMPU notes a slowdown was due to the run up to the Mango update (more stringent approval, mango app requirements). Now they say it’s back on track to get 1k/week.

Though numbers are good, I hope Microsoft don’t flood their store with nonsense apps. So far browsing it, there’s a high percentage of quality apps. Every time I’m browsing Nokia store, it shows me the same apps I downloaded half a year ago. And it’s in the category of “new”. I was looking for an app to demo and the best I could find after 10 minutes was a cow milking app. Yeah. I think the problem here may be more on discovery. Content wise, it should increase markedly as the Belle devices are more widely available.

Back to Windows Phone related things, MORE than half of all Android devices sold are apparently under a Microsoft licence.

Microsoft has now entered into 1,133 outbound license deals with various companies around the world. Microsoft detailed the numbers surrounding its Android patent licensing deals. It revealed that 53% of Android OEM’s and 58% of Android ODM’s are now under Microsoft’s patent protection.

I guess that’s what you get when you construct an OS with stolen technology – at least according to Oracle, MS and Apple. Steve Jobs had said he felt Android was stolen technology.

Associated Press (via CNet) quotes Jobs,

 “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

http://news.cnet.com...

This was of course some time ago as they have possibly double that in the bank now. Still unfortunately no mission accomplished for Jobs. But competition is great no? The google way is awesome. Get something from other competitors, give it away for free, profit from having lots of users use your products and thus having a great avenue to obtain data and deliver adverts and finally let manufacturers feel the brunt of lawsuits – feeling none yourself, though crying if someone else nudges you out of patents.

Regardless of the situation, the only way to really take Android on is to build better and better products that is cheaper and is marketed well enough so people can give this a try, use it and like it.

Source: WMPU1, WMPU2

Category: Nokia, Windows Phone