The number of applications for Windows Phone 7 (WP7), according to the official Microsoft blog, has reached 30,000.
Since the launch at the end of 2010, the number of applications in the Windows Phone Marketplace has been constantly increasing. In March, the number of applications reached 11,500, and a month ago – 25,000. Of course, Microsoft’s numbers are not high compared to Apple’s App Store, which now has about 500,000 apps, and Google’s Android Market with its 250,000. But for the app store, which opened less than a year ago, 30 thousand is not so bad.
In December 2010, an analyst at IDC predicted that the Windows Phone Marketplace could become the third largest app store after the App Store and Android Market.
Microsoft has already overtaken the Blackberry app store from RIM (BlackBerry World), which has 25,000 units, but has not yet caught up with Nokia’s Ovi Store with its 40,000. Of course, the cooperation of two companies – Microsoft and Nokia – for the production of Windows Phone may eventually lead to a merger of the two stores.
In public statements, Microsoft cares more about the applications themselves than about the exact numbers. Microsoft representative Brandon Watson wrote in a blog post in the spring that “for us, quality is more important than quantity,” and stressed that the official figures are given without taking into account lite versions and versions in different languages.