Winrumours reported on Friday, “Marketplace trackers windowsphoneapplist.com is currently tracking 25,015 apps in the U.S. market place alone. WP7applist is tracking 24,784 applications worldwide and explains 4,025 of them are inactive, 51% are available for free and the average price is $1.48 per paid application.
Windows Phone 7 launched on October 26, 2010 with 1,000 applications available. Microsoft appears to be building up a good momentum amongst application developers. Microsoft says it now has over 40,000 Windows Phone application developers, who deliver an average of 100 new apps per day.
Despite delays with its first platform update, “NoDo”, developers have a lot to look forward to this year. Microsoft’s new Nokia partnership is a great opportunity for new and existing developers as more and more consumers take advantage of Windows Phone. Nokia said recently that it plans to ship Windows Phone branded devices to developers when they are available later this year. “Mango”, the codename for what will likely be named Windows Phone 7.5, is currently in the final development stages at Microsoft. The software giant revealed a number of new enhancements recently and promised over 500 features at launch. Nokia has also promised a batch of Windows Phone Mango devices, due later this year.
While the number of apps may pale in comparison to that of the Apple App Store, Microsoft has been strict with its Marketplace approval policy to ensure quality over quantity. Apple has been criticised in the past for allowing so called ‘bulk apps’, which is the appstore equivalent of 9999-in-1 videogame cartridges – multitude of similar apps from the same developer. It’s no wonder that the iPad recently breached the 100,000 app mark. The deal with Nokia may also spur more user interest in the WP platform. A positive attitude towards the homebrew community and jailbreaking helps too.