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:
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
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Sites That Link to this Post
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One thing I miss from OVI store is the limited time specials, they are usually top apps for free a period.
I’ve just downloaded asphalt6 on N8, however due to the limited CPU and OS (Anna), it runs like a dog.
Yup, I like those promos. I had to hard reset my N8 so I lost all the free apps I had.
What’s worse is that there was a paid app I bought before that but because I hard reset too many times, and thus redownloaded more than the stupid imposed brain-dead limit (who ever said that was a good idea needs to be locked in a cupboard), Ovi Store wants me to buy again. No thanks.
I think most of the 3D games I had ran fine on N8. Just some more intensive ones kinda kept crashing or not starting and required a restart to refresh RAM.
I remember playing Dungeon Hunter 2, just when I was about to fight the Dark Queen, the game crashed!!
Thankfully, the game autosaves a lot. Nowadays, I kill all the background applications first before playing the game.
Whilst first pointing out that I welcome any good news about Nokia Windows Phone (hey I want Nokia to succeed, and if WP helps that, great, I just think it was a huge mistake ditching Symbian and announcing that up front too), and respect that people like WP, I just want to add in a relevant story here about Qt, which is also showing wonderful growth: http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Blogs/blog/nokia-developer-news/2011/12/22/qt-developer-events-in-beijing-and-tokyo
From the article: “The Nokia Store, with 10 million downloads per day, now offers developers 155 million Nokia devices to target with Qt apps – and there is ongoing momentum here, as the plans are to make Qt a core part of the Nokia strategy in bringing apps to the next billion.”
This statement shifts the view of Symbian/Nokia apps radically in my view. Most recent figures from Apple and Google state that 250 million iOS devices have sold and 190 million Androids. Then you need to knock a chunk off for upgrades etc. as those are total sales to date. So compared to those numbers, 155 million Nokia Qt devices to target is a VERY VERY good market (not better than iOS or Android, but still excellent in it’s own right).
Then remembering too that Nokia Store has by far the widest global reach of any app store, and way more payment possibility for developers (i.e. phone bill payment in many more places than other app stores which sees much higher purchase rates than credit card billing).
So this is all great news for Symbian, for Qt, for the N9, and shows clearly that Qt will offer possibly the strongest app platform going forward (in the next few years possibly 1.25 billion potential customers).
I do think Qt on Windows Phone is something that needs addressing though – for Nokia Windows Phone’s sake, not for Qt’s sake which will be very strong either way.
Since Nokia isn’t probably putting WP on the low end market they still own, and they are indeed putting some Qt based OS (Meltemi?), becoming a Qt developer is indeed a really interesting proposal.
Also, a couple of months ago Adobe acquired Nitobi, the makers of Phonegap. That probably means something regarding the future of HTML5 (HTML+JS+CSS) apps. In a few years time this “ecosystem” thing might well be a thing of the past. Ironically, the more succesful WP is, and eventually Meltemi, Bada and whatnot, the bigger the chance web tecnologies invade the different app-stores making them a moot point in customer decision making.
You guys don’t get tired of the Qt BS? how many Qt apps has been ported to Meego?
It’s also worth keeping in mind that a lot of the iOS app submissions are lite versions of paid apps, which Windows Phone has as trials, so when it comes to distinct apps, the Windows Phone marketplace is the fastest growing app store ever.
Good point.. Also read somewhere that some stores count different language versions of some apps separately. Not sure if that’s true though.
Too bad that the WP marketplace isn’t available in a lot of countries. That’s why I’ll not get the L800.
Too bad you dont know what you are talking about.. you just need to sign in with a a live id of a supported country and the app market will work ..
And then again, if you need a call blocker (like Advanced Call Manager for Symbian), a call recorder (like a handful of them on Symbian too) or any other advanced telephony app, you’ll have a seriously hard time on iOS, a very hard time on Android and probably the same on WP7. (Why they’ve decided to keep telephone out of the ecuation when it comes to programmability is beyond me.)
I just don’t buy the “ecosystem” thing. It’s just a new term for “lock in”, in my view. And maybe it’s just me and my needs, but the tiny selection of apps in http://n9-apps.com/ makes much more sense than most of what I’ve seen in Apple’s app store in years. (No, I don’t own an N9 yet, but that’s part of why I’m probably buying one.)
Vendor lock-in is the ultimate goal here, its been pretty obvious. Just picture MeeGo, Android, and Symbian sharing QT apps, being sold or distributed by independent websites like amazon ? hahah ya.. right
I really hope HTML5 shatters the whole thing to the ground .. “eco” systems and all the bs around it.
if web apps could produce same quality apps it would be the leveler that we’re all waiting for. Something to equal the field again to things the phone does as opposed to being immediately ignored because it doesn’t have apps or developer interest.
BTW, ecosystem isn’t just apps.
e.g. iPhone is part apps, but also the Apple environment. iTunes, iCloud.
Google is all the google services.
Nokia is/was Ovi Stuff, +Maps
Microsoft is office, xbox, windows, ms services.
Aim is the same though, to trap you into using their product line of software and services. Who ever integrates the best, wins.
I cringe when I hear the Qt BS.. how many Symbian apps have been ported to Meego so far?
Aleve,
there is a very good community wher eyou can download ALL of N9 apps and where you can rate the apps/leave comments and chat.
its: http://www.my-meego.com.
its not as flashy as n9-apps.com but content wise, it is much better IMO.
and yes, N9 has some really nice apps already and more seem to be appearing everyday.
Not iOS though
The well-beaten path is easier to walk. Being the last to deliver an app store skews the numbers substantially given that the apps delivered to other platforms are already developed and need only be ported as opposed to created from scratch.
Doing that work as a hedge (just in case) makes a lot of sense. The marginal cost is low and the payoff is a lottery ticket.
True, it does make it easier. It is just saddenig that Nokia was on that path before anyone else but stopped for a pic nic instead of developing easy developer tools and a good store cliet early enough. Oh well, another mismanaged step of the past I guess.