Marketplace for Mobile – PPCGeeks.com

How Many Apps In That App Store?

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 05:28:43 +0000

Apps, apps, apps! With Google’s recent announcement that the Android Market has reached 38,000 applications, I decided to find out how many applications are in each of the major smartphone app stores. Remember that these figures are only for the number of applications in the official application store and do not include the total number of applications for a platform.

With no surprise, Apple leads the count with just shy of 160,000 applications at last count, while the aforementioned Android Market has 38,000. Claming a distant third in this size-only contest is Blackberry’s App World, which has 6531. Symbian is fourth with just over 3400 apps while following behind in fifth is the Palm App Catalog with 2169 applications. Falling dead last is Windows Marketplace For Mobile, with only 840 approved applications. For posterity sakes, the morbid Palm OS App Store has 2393 applications.

If the non-approved applications were to be included, my best estimate is that Apple would still be leading, with Android, Windows Mobile and Symbian vying for second place, and the rest of the field falling well back. It will be interesting to see if Apple can maintain this gargantuan lead as Android’s growth has been absolutely torrid. Also, will the paltry number of 840 increase to several thousand with the looming Windows Phone 7 launch later this year? Only time will tell!

Please note that for the Microsoft, Blackberry and Palm OS figures, I used a calculator to add up the total as they each give a break down of how many applications are in each genre, but not the total amount of approved applications. Also, as these stats are not officially given by the various companies, they are what I have found to be the most reliable count.

Special thanks to Mr. X, Mikee4fun, and psycho_maniac for helping with this post. Image from thewebsquad.com.

[OP/ED]- Microsoft to ditch Mobile OS?

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 22:12:42 +0000

An interesting article has been posted by the UK’s newspaper The Guardian hypothesizes that Microsoft could abandon their Mobile OS platform, Windows Mobile, all together and call it quits. They cite that the 3.1 percent drop of their share of the Mobile OS Pie (down from 11 to 7.9%), the increasing support for Android from previous WM-heavy players (HTC, Motorola), and the increasing competition that Android poises (0 to 3.9% market share in 1 year).

I call shenanigans on this happening. Here’s why-

1) Windows Mobile 7

The OS that Microsoft should have released instead of WM 6.5 looks very promising and will come with enhanced touchscreen support. The days of needing a stylus to click on some miniature icon will be gone, instead replaced by a Zune-influenced interface that looks to be equal to or even surpass the iPhone and Android. Why spend hundreds of millions of dollars on creating a new mobile OS and then ditch it a year later?

2) HTC and hardware partners

Yes, 7.9% is but a small sliver of the overall market. However, when that sliver includes millions of devices being sold, then it is a lot. There are 14 OEM licensees of Windows Mobile compared to the second place Symbian operating system at 10. Why would HTC spend millions developing the Sense UI if they were not committed to the Windows Mobile platform for the conceivable future?

3) 3 Screens and a Cloud

3 Screens (PC, the television, and the mobile phone ) and a Cloud. This is the basic strategy behind what Microsoft envisions as the future of computing. The Mobile phone is one of the key tenets in their plan. Ditching their own Mobile OS does not mesh well with this strategy.

The company plans to deliver a set of services that are common across devices, PCs and TVs. One example is the Zune Video service that will work across Zune HD players, Xbox consoles, Windows PCs and Windows Phones. If they are to follow their own self-envisioned plan for the future, why would Microsoft ditch their own Mobile OS?¹

¹Idea comes from this article by Mary Jo Foley.

[UPDATED] Microsoft’s Marketplace for Mobile Has Remote Death Switch For Apps

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:58:54 +0000

Updated September 18:

Microsoft has offered some clarification on this issue:

Quote:

In the vast majority of instances where an application is removed from Windows Marketplace for Mobile, users of this application will continue to be able to use these applications on their phones. In the rare event an application from Marketplace exhibits harmful behavior or has unforeseen effects, Marketplace has the capability to remotely uninstall these applications. While we hope to avoid this scenario, we will make refunds available in such cases.

As part of their upcoming launch of Marketplace for Mobile, Microsoft will be including a kill switch. However, unlike Apple, who has a similar tool for their App Store, Microsoft is removing the application from the phone if the application becomes unapproved in the Market.

Quote:

– If an application is approved but later removed from the marketplace it will then be automatically removed from all mobile devices.

In the past, any application downloaded to a Windows Mobile phone would continue to be there, regardless of the application. It was possible for the creator to kill the application if they so chose, but it was common knowledge that the user who downloaded that application still had the rights to use it.

While any user or developer who goes through Marketplace will agree to such a feature when they accept the EULA, this will create some serious questions when a paid-for app is wiped clean. Will a user who paid for an app receive a refund if their application is wiped clean? Will the developer or Microsoft be responsible for the refund?

Source: Geekzone.co.nz via msmobiles.com