Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace has hit yet another mini-milestone today with the announcement it’s hit 9,000 total apps, after hitting 6,500 just last month.
On this track, the marketplace will likely hit the 10,000 mark by mid-March, and grow even faster over the next couple months as Microsoft is now allowing developers to submit 100 free apps rather than the five they initially allowed. The quick initial growth is likely due to Microsoft’s massive marketing power, but will it last in the long-term?
At this point, the Windows Marketplace is likely larger than the WebOS app store (exact numbers are hard to find) and is larger than Blackberry’s App World when you don’t count themes and eBooks (at last count, Blackberry had about 20,000 total apps, though most are themes and eBooks). Still, there’s a long way to go before hitting triple digits like Apple and Google both did long ago with their respective iOS and Android app stores, but it’s still worth noting.
Now, the questions remain as to how the apps are performing for developers and Microsoft itself. Are they earning solid revenue from sales and advertising? Are people downloading them? There’s a lot left to learn before painting a solid picture of the Windows Phone Marketplace, but for now, growth is accelerating faster than I predicted in the beginning.
[UPDATE]: To shed some light on the question of whether developers are seeing any revenue from their Windows Phone Marketplace apps, a commenter pointed out this tweet from a developer who says the revenue he earned from his app on the first day in the Windows Phone Marketplace was double what he made during the first week of inclusion in the Android Market. Very interesting indeed.
