Windows Phone 8 Developer Numbers Increase By 40%

By Author: Ruth Jackson
Total Articles: 51
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According to Microsoft Technologies, 2012 has proven to be a very good year for Windows Phone and its developers. During this period, over 75,000 new apps were published in the store and more than 300,000 app updates got submitted across the year. This results make it about 54 apps, on an average, getting downloaded on every phone. On of the primary factors to have worked is the expansion of the payment options for users. Working hard at implementing alternative payment methods such as Paypal, Alipay and carrier billing seems to have done the trick. This has resulted in developer revenue increasing by 40% since the launch of their Windows Phone 8 SDK. There has also been a phenomenal 95% increase in the number of potential customers with the launch of Windows Phone 8 across 191 markets ; this was earlier restricted to only 35. Out of the total of 150,000 apps now, the Windows Phone Store published about half i.e. 75,000 apps in the last one year. Although it is still far away from Apple's whopping 740,000 apps , it is the rate at which apps have got published which should be encouraging . Also, in the process it has overtaken ...
... Blackberry by a good margin already. ( Blackberry's App World has some 90,000 apps ).MS has also made it possible this year to share their concerns about an app or a game. With Bing powering the searches & with the addition of Smart lists, it has become much easier to locate a relevant app. Further enhancements have also been made like the new collections and recommendations for WP8 customers.

In the first 30 days of the SDK release, there has already been a 40 percent increase in month-over-month developer. Microsoft has scaled up its resources to handle a large influx of developer submissions. Efforts also are being put for die hard WP 7 users. They are supposed to receive the WP 7.8 update with a new start screen & some 10 new themes in addition to many new apps. Inspite of all the efforts, industry analysts have shared what they feel is a major concern. According to them, Microsoft has yet not promised its users the availability of the latest and the greatest apps with the best features first. Irrespective of the number of apps available in the store if the commonly used ones are missing, then it will become increasingly difficult to consider WP8 smartphones as an alternative to IPhone and other Android counterparts. The current Windows Phone Marketplace has no Pandora, No Instagram, a Facebook app which does not have the latest features and a Twitter app which has not been updated for a long time. Besides all this, the preferred choice to launch new apps is on iPhone first followed by Android. So in addition to having to clear the backlog , & do it really fast, they also will have to draw the attention of the Windows Phone 8 Developers as an alternative platform to launch their new apps.

Many analysts feel that there has never been a better time for Windows Phone or its developers since there is so much at hand which needs to be done. Microsoft is also doing its bit to woo them. If you sense this as an opportunity and have some brilliant app ideas in mind, we can be your preferred partner to develop them. Mindfire Solutions has years of experience of having executed numerous projects on Windows Mobile Operating system and on devices ranging from Pocket PCs to Smartphones. Our expertise goes from mobile apps development from Windows CE operating system to Windows Mobile 5.0 to Windows Phone 7.0. Given our background and expertise we can be oyur reliable development partner for WP8 Development.