Microsoft latest and greatest mobile operating system – Windows Phone 7 – now has 5,000 applications available for it on the Windows Marketplace, according to WP7applist.com. It reaches this milestone in just two months after launch.
Meanwhile, Android has managed to cross the 200,000 app mark on the Android Market according to AndroLib. A formidable figure, but still not as impressive as the 300,000+ apps available for the iOS. Then again, numbers tell only half the story and the actual number of quality applications is far less on these platforms.
Remember that the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has only been open for a little over two months, and the whole WP7 platform is still very much in the early adoption stage. To put things into perspective, Windows Phone 7 only took a little over two months to meet the 5,000 app threshold. On the flip side, Palm’s webOS has been out for a year and a half and it is only now hitting 5,000 apps. That says something right there.
While there are certainly a number of free applications available through the WP7 Marketplace, it’s also noteworthy that the average price of an app got about a ten cent bump to $1.52 last week. The $500 “I Am Rich” app surely had something to do with that.
Of the 5,000 apps, about a fifth are mobile games. That just goes to show you that gaming on smartphones is definitely a big thing, even when it comes to a Microsoft platform. There is Xbox Live on there after all.
