A year ago, in November 2010, Windows Phone 7 Marletplace was launched. Distimo has published a report that provides information about the Microsoft online store, its applications and the number of developers. The report includes data on 35 countries in which Windows Phone 7 Markerplace is now available.
The following conclusions were made:At the moment, in the Windows phone 7 Marketplace, users download 101 thousand free applications and 20 thousand paid applications per day (data is presented for the top 300 most popular applications by downloads).
These figures are 39 times less than the number of downloads in the Apple App Store for iPhone
The number of paid applications in the WP7 Marketplace has been constantly growing at a rate of approximately 1300 new applications per month. The volume of free applications increased by an average of 1,650 applications
The number of publishers increased every month by 700
Approximately 50% of all applications are available in the 17 countries in which WP7 was originally launched initially. One third of the apps are available in all 35 countries
The developers believe that the global distribution of paid applications is easier than the distribution of free content. Point localization (i.e. localization in individual countries, not globally) free apps have higher than paid ones
The most popular category in the WP7 Marketplace is Games. Also popular are the categories Tools & Productivity, Entertainment and Travel & Navigation.
While the “Games” category is not available in many other app stores in South Africa, in the WP7 Marketplace in this region, 64% of the top 100 paid apps are in the “Games” category.