A Year in the Life of Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

A year ago, in November 2010, Windows Phone 7 Marletplace was launched. Distimo has published a report that provides information about the Microsoft online store, its applications and the number of developers. The report includes data on 35 countries where Windows Phone 7 Markerplace is currently available.

The following conclusions were drawn:

At the moment, in the Windows phone 7 Marketplace, users download 101 thousand free applications and 20 thousand paid applications per day (data is presented for the top 300 most popular applications by downloads). These figures are 39 times less than the number of downloads in the Apple App Store for iPhone

The number of paid apps in the WP7 Marketplace has been steadily growing at a rate of approximately 1,300 new apps per month. The volume of free applications increased by an average of 1,650 applications

The number of publishers increased by 700 every month 

Approximately 50% of all applications are available in the 17 countries in which WP7 was originally launched initially. One third of the apps are available in all 35 countries

The developers believe that the global distribution of paid applications is simpler than the distribution of free content. Point localization (i.e. localization in individual countries, not globally) free apps have a higher rate than paid ones

The most popular category in the WP7 Marketplace is Games. The categories Tools & Productivity, Entertainment and Travel & Navigation are also popular.

 While the "Games" category is not available in many other app stores in South Africa, in the WP7 Marketplace in this region, 64% of the top 100 paid apps are in the "Games" category.