With a HTC and Samsung conference only a week away, leaks have begun as to what the two OEMS may reveal – it"s largely expected that they will announce several new Windows Phones, running Mango out of the box.
Coincidentally the Windows Phone app store is well on its way to hit 30,000 apps which will mark another milestone for Microsoft and a win for the consumer. The Windows Phone Marketplace has seen close to 1000 new apps developed in the past two weeks and that number continues to climb.
The most popular apps are games, which account for 17% of the marketplace – hardly surprising considering the same category is also the most popular on iOS and Android app stores. Educational and sports apps tied for second place both taking up 14% of the market each, followed by entertainment apps which came in as the fourth most popular at 11%.
Of the 29,000+ apps currently on the market, 75% of those are in English with German being the second most popular language.
And what provides more joy than a free app that is incredibly useful? Currently 47% of the apps on the marketplace are free to download and use. A smaller 20% are trial-ware apps which ask you to pay after the trial is over and 8522 apps (33%) require you to pay to be able to use them.
With the release of Microsoft’s new update for Windows Phone codenamed “Mango” and new OEMs on board, it’s only a matter of time till the current 8105 approved developers for Windows Phone becomes a much larger number as development for the marketplace and Windows Phone entirety continues to grow.
More recently Microsoft has been trying to capitalize on the recent collapse of WebOS, as Brandon Watson offered developers the chance to develop for Windows Phone. Neowin reported that the opportunity had attracted over 1000 emails in a short amount of time, which could cause Windows Phone app development to skyrocket.