The Windows Store is positioned by Microsoft as its flagship app store, and the company is regularly seen encouraging app developers to create for the Windows platform.
The apps repository officially launched on October 26 last year, with a count of 9,000 unique apps, and witnessed a respectable growth during the next two months.
Microsoft is officially mum on the total number of apps that are live on the Windows Store, though unofficial sources like MetroStore Scanner try to keep a tab on things. And the number that shows up over there at the time of this writing is 39,860 apps available worldwide.
Essentially, the last month or so witnessed a dramatic slowdown of the number of applications submitted, with only 4,000 new apps showing up during this time period. Surely the Holidays and New Year breaks had a bit of a say in this.
But when you consider that around 26,000 new apps that showed up in the first two months of the launch of the Windows Store, a showing of 4,000 is a basically a big slow down.
In such a competitive environment, Windows 8 needs as many apps it can to succeed. The US market total stands at 26,293 apps, and China still remains the market with the biggest number of localized apps at 27,968.
A growth sprout in the near future cannot be discounted, however, as the next few months should see Windows 8 make greater inroads on computers the world over, Surface RT expanding its retail availability as well as launching in other markets, and Surface Pro gearing up for liftoff.
But for all intents and purposes we can rule out the Microsoft’s hope of seeing 100,000 live on the Windows Store by April. Keith Lorizio, the vice president of US Sales & Marketing at Microsoft expressed a desire back in October last year to see this milestone in the first 90 days of release.
In fact, from how things are looking, half of this goal will be a job not too shabbily done.
All Comments
US market has 26,293 apps and China has 27,968 apps. Sum it up is 50,000+ apps already. How come the total apps is only 39,860? Seems not adding up.
No, these are actually the same apps, just localized versions. 🙂 And even English versions that are available in a particular market. China just has more apps because developers have created more Chinese language apps, plus they have more English versions available from the start.
Because if we added all the markets up your way, the total number of apps comes in at 2,367,784. A figure of over 2 million, which I am sure Microsoft would love, ha!