Microsoft announced today that its Windows Phone Store has reached 200,000 apps. This is a real milestone achieved by Microsoft. Microsoft achieved the milestone in quite shorter period. About six months back, the number was 100,000. And now, the number of apps in Windows Phone Store have been doubled, making it 200k. Recently, Windows Store also reached 100k apps.
That is definitely good news for both developers and users. Microsoft has another exciting news for developers. Microsoft claims that it has most carriers connected for carrier billing in all smartphone platforms. It has 51 carriers in 31 markets. Here are official words from Microsoft,
“We are also continuing to invest in establishing carrier billing connections, recognizing that in many markets (especially those where credit card penetration is low) the preferred method for consumers is to purchase apps via your carrier and the billing relationship you already have established. In fact, we see an increase in transaction volume of over 6x in developing markets when carrier billing is enabled. Just this week, we reached a major milestone of 51 carrier connections across 31 markets, substantially more than any other smartphone platform, and with more in the works for the new calendar year.”
Windows Phone is growing day by day. This year sees the fastest growth of Windows Phone platform. Popular Game Developers like Gameloft, Rockstar Games and Rovio are releasing their games on Windows Phone platform as they launched them on other two popular platforms Android and iOS. Other important apps like Foursquare and Instagram which were previously not there for Windows Phone platform have also made their debut on Windows Phone platform. So, ‘app gap’ is decreasing day by day between three most popular mobile operating systems. Few weeks ago, Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore tweeted that we are going to see almost no app gap by the end of the 2014. Microsoft may combine Windows Store and Windows Phone Store. In this way, the app gap will become minimum.