You have to believe that any time the Windows Phone team decides to blog about even the most innocuous of topics these days, I’m reading very carefully and looking between the lines where possible. And it’s hard to say this without sounding like a jerk, but when the title of a post is A Year Later–The Windows Phone 7 Numbers That Matter, it’s hard not to see this as making lemonade. Because the only numbers that seem to matter, of course, are unit sales and market share. And without even reading this post, you know going in those are the numbers that will never be discussed.
But the post is also developer-oriented, so maybe that’s the right context with which to read it. And according to Brandon Watson, who would know, the numbers are looking good:
When considering the various measures of progress over the last year, we tend to focus on the third party developers who have built so many amazing apps and games for the platform.
We thought it would be fun to take a look at some of the numbers that illustrate our commitment to the four guiding principles [we established as part of] our original commitment to developers a year ago:
1.5 Million – The Windows Phone Developer Tools, consisting of Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone and Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone, have been downloaded over 1.5 million times.
36,000 - 36,000 members of the AppHub community have voted with their wallets and became members of the Windows Phone developer community.
11,500 - We’ve got apps; thousands of them. In fact our ecosystem generated 10,000 apps faster than anyone else, without padding the stats.
7,500 - So far, we have nearly 7,500 [paid] apps in our Marketplace.
1,200 - The 1,200 newly registered developers we are adding every week is incredibly encouraging.
1,100 - There are now 1,100 apps that are generating developer revenue using the Microsoft Advertising Ad Control.
12 - Windows Phone customers download an average of 12 apps each month.
1.8 – Developers have experienced an average time to certification of 1.8 days. Certification can yield a pass or fail, but developers get an answer on average in days – not weeks, nor months.
62% -62% of all apps pass certification on their first attempt.
44% – Of all the paid apps in the Marketplace, 44% of them include access to a Trial version.
40% – 40% of the fully registered developer population has published an app or game.
Watson then promises that Microsoft will be “outlining our purpose and principles for our forthcoming release when we get to MIX11 starting April 12th,” which I take to mean that the company will be discussing Mango publicly for the first time. I can’t wait.
I can’t wait either… I want to see what is in store for Windows Phone. Hopefully they won’t just give us little tidbits of information and then have us wait till fall before we actually know all that’s in the update.
I dont if this numbers are accurate
But I’m excited about MANGO….
As a developer, I’d love to hear about market share and the total number of devices sold. I’ve created a couple WP7 apps but am reluctant to spend any more time and money finishing and releasing them to such a limited audience. A talented colleague of mine released a very good utility that is listed near the top of its category in the marketplace, but it’ll take him a year to recoup the $100 developer fee that he paid. And he’ll never recover the cost of the phone and the plan, if you factor those into the cost of doing business.
So just like with all aspects of WP7, it’s a labor of love. If I wanted to get rich, I’d develop some retarded fart or burp app on iThing ;)
Trying to woo more developers with irrelevant number for consumers. Outlining the purpose and Principles for next release is good but include the outlining of better delivery mechanism!
Will you be live blogging at MIX this year Paul? Also it would be awesome if you could talk to somebody on WP team at MIX, and have a pleasant interview about the last couple of months regarding Windows Phone and the future. :)
I’ll be at MIX. Not sure about live blogging yet. Most likely.
You have to admit, they have done a pretty good job on this end! You don’t see apps hogging up battery, or apps that carry root kits or trojans, etc… Reality is so far, WP is probably the safest and most secure platform. Sure stuff isn’t there, but they also haven’t made promises around this and let the developers down, unlike other areas of the platform.
Sadly, currently it is security through obscurity… Windows Phone could certainly be secure, but we won’t know that until it is tested with mass market adoption.
We thought the iPhone and Android were secure, and as time passes, we are seeing that it is not true. Apple is not very good at security, and Android being “based on Linux” does nothing.
Windows is very secure, no matter what people think, as Windows has been and still is being targeted the most due to its massive market share, and PWN2OWN competitions show that Mac OS X is no more secure than Windows.
Hi Paul
The quote on actual developer numbers needs to verified I believe “36,000 – 36,000 members of the AppHub community have voted with their wallets and became members of the Windows Phone developer community.” As Xbox indie developers have to sign up using app hub at what was $120 (AUD) for me.
Knowing these guys, “forthcoming release” could mean NoDo lol.
Speaking of which, there’s been a recent “workaround” that’s been released in the last 24 hours for NoDo. A huge number of people have had success with it, myself included. The method is hilarious given it’s not intrusive at all. Give it a shot…
Just got NoDo…from Telus in Canada. It does seem quicker and more responsive. But maybe that’s because the phone just rebooted!