Windows Phone Marketplace: Breakdown of First Year
November 23, 2011 No Comments
Microsoft took a chance with Windows Phone when they first launched it only a year ago. Starting completely from scratch, not even Windows Mobile apps were allowed into their new app store which they dubbed the Marketplace. Fast forward a year later and Windows Phone is already at 40,000 apps which is a record for any mobile ecosystem after only a year. Fueled by games which are sitting a top not only in sheer quantity compared to the other categories but also in downloads, Windows Phone serves up apps in 35 Countries. This made possible with the Mango update which saw the Windows Phone marketplace add 18 more countries to the 17 available at launch.
Distimo’s has highlighted a few facts about the Windows Phone Marketplace (Year One)
The major findings are:
- The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has the highest download volume in the United States with 101k free downloads and 20k paid downloads per day in the top 300 most downloaded applications. Here, the download volume of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is 39 times smaller relative to the download volume in the Apple App Store for iPhone.
- Paid applications in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace have grown continuous with almost 1300 new paid applications every month. Free applications have increased on average by 1650 new free applications month-over-previous month
- The number of publishers has consistently grown since the launch of the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace with 700 new publishers per month.
- Nearly 50% of all applications are available in the 17 countries in which the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace was originally accessible. One-third of all applications are available in all 35 countries.
- Developers find it easier to distribute paid content globally instead of free content. Free content is more localized in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace.
- The most popular category in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace is Games. Other popular categories are Tools & Productivity, Entertainment and Travel & Navigation.
- While games are not available in many other app stores in South Africa, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace in South Africa 64% of all the top 100 paid applications are games.
- Japanese developers are locally successful; however, they find it hard to deploy this success to other countries. This is because Japan has a high daily download volume for free applications, but a low level of mutual popular free applications with other countries.
Also, as you can see the breakdown between what is available on the Windows Phone marketplace as far as categories are concerned.
In the US, Windows Phone is averaging 101K downloads a day, 20K of them being paid applications. Windows Phone still has a long battle ahead of them but after only a year in and already having to huge competitors already settled in. I would mark this as a successful year being that we all knew it would be a struggle to the top. The position Windows Phone is in right at this moment feels like how Xbox was when Xbox 360 was just being rumored. The core fans of the platform are very excited about whats next and as long as Microsoft keeps improving on Windows Phone, it should become as big of a hit as the Xbox 360 was.
About Distimo:
Distimo was founded to solve the challenges created by a widely fragmented app store marketplace filled with equally fragmented information and statistics.
Distimo was launched shortly after the introduction of the first app store. App stores have clearly shown since that time that they are the way forward for content distribution. The app store model offers an enormous opportunity for developers to get their content out and dramatically improves content discovery by consumers. However, the mobile market has long been characterized by fragmentation, which is also displayed in the wide range of mobile application stores that were launched from 2009 on.
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