So just in case you missed it somewhere down the line, I left Windows Phone about 3 years ago out of frustration and started another site, AlliOSNews. Now I like iOS but it isn’t magical. I like the iPhone 5s as well but again, it isn’t magical. To me, the magic was in Windows Phone. But there was a glaring hole in the platform and that would be the app store. When I left a few years ago there were less than 25,000 apps in the app store. That was at a time when Apple was pushing some 300,000. Yeah, it puts it into perspective that the Windows Phone Store has just now hit the 300K marker.
As I wrote in my first post here a couple of weeks ago, there were two main reasons I came back to the Windows Phone community (besides missing all you peeps of course!). One was the improvements that Microsoft had made in Windows Phone 8.0 and 8.1 and the second was the Windows Phone Store was finally getting the attention it need from big developers.
Now before you start sending me hate mail, I’m not disrespecting independent developers. Every platform – Windows Phone, iOS and Android – depends heavily on independent developers. But equally, every platform needs a big name brand developer in the
Windows Phone Store Downloads Count
mix to help sell and bring attention to the platform. For what seemed like forever the Windows Phone Store lacked that big name developer. Thus it struggled.
Fast forward to today. There are now 300,000 apps in the App store and there are some big names in there now. There are popular games like the Angry Bird franchise, Plants v Zombies and even Gameloft’s Assassin’s Creed. There are social apps like Facebook, Instagram and Foursquare (without Swarm thank you very much!) and of course all of the Office apps. All this means that over the course of the history of the Windows Phone Store there have been 2 billion downloads according to Microsoft. Not too shabby!
Let’s be realistic here peeps. There is still a long way to go for the Windows Phone Store and we as users know it. But it is equally realistic to be positive about where things are heading. If you can’t find the app you are looking for the chances are it is coming at some point.
Get to downloading peeps!
