WP Marketplace reaches 50,000 quicker than Android, Symbian and Blackberry.

A couple of weeks ago we heard that WP Marketplace reached 45,000. Rafe predicted that it would reach 50,000 by the first week of January. Well technically right, though slightly ahead of schedule and so Rafe notes accelerated growth in the Marketplace. He’s put together a really informative piece which you should go check out. We’ve summarised some keypoints after the link.

http://allaboutwindowsphone.com/news/item/13913_Windows_Phone_Marketplace_pass.php

Rafe mentions that there’s actually 6,000 items that have been removed and even has a break down of the total number of apps that’s available to each handset my region (likewise with various stores, e.g. Nokia Store, there are certain apps that exist only in certain markets).

The accelerated app submissions Rafe attributes either to the release of more Windows Phones, or more notably, Nokia Lumia coming into the game and developers having more confidence in this platform. Another interesting statistic is the rate at which each store reached 50k mark. With 4 million install base, that’s apparently an advantage for iOS to reach 50k when their app store launched. (Didn’t Symbian have hundreds of millions? :S) Anyway, Windows Phone has reached 50k in 14 months, 2 months behind iOS but 5 months quicker than Android and 11 months quicker than Symbian and over a year faster than BlackBerry. In terms of app metrics, Rafe says that suggests WP Marketplace to be a credible challenger to both App Store and Google Marketplace.

Given the strength of competition, it’s good to hear that devs are giving WP a chance. That reminds me of another interesting post on app stats:

http://mynokiablog.com/2011/12/04/1-million-mobile-apps-in-the-marketplace-windows-phone-apps-more-profitable-and-gaining-developer-support-at-iphone-app-expense/

The post above shows similar breakdown in app type proportions, entertainment along with books and reference, games and tools+productivity. 58% of apps are free, 14% have free trial and 29% are paid. By comparison, Android is 69 free:31 paid, iOS 43 free:57 paid. Most of the apps I’d say are priced well although there are some cross platform apps that I find to be overpriced. It’s even funnier to see the prices of Microsoft’s own apps to be cheaper on rival platforms. Er hello? We’ve gone through this with Ovi Store. Apps mostly are spur of the moment buys. £0.79 apps if I like them are bought in a snap. Price them higher and well I start to think, is it worth it? The higher that is priced, the longer I take to decide and therefore more time that I’m likely to say no. That’s just me but I’m thinking that’s how a lot of others think (Well those that are willing to buy apps. Some don’t buy at all).

That’s not discounting higher priced apps totally. Apps that are fantastic, really great, can command higher prices. That’s fair. But they should be similar across all platforms. Likewise, is there’s a shitty app that’s cheap, I don’t care how cheap, I’m not going to buy it (lol, so many on Ovi Store like this -_-)

App numbers are good and all but what’s really important is quality of apps. Whilst there is noise in every app store, fortunately there is a significantly greater amount of decent and great apps on this platform, so much so that reviewers of WP are now able to use the platform as the apps they need and have been using on other platforms are on WP.

Source: allaboutwindowsphone

Thanks Viipottaja for the tip!

Category: Nokia, Windows Phone