36,000 Devs Are Part of the Windows Phone Community

Last year, Redmond-based software giant Microsoft came to the market with a new mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7, which was unveiled during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, and which landed on shelves in October.

The sales of Windows Phone 7 devices are expanding, and the same applies to the number of applications available for it, or to the number of developers committed to deliver software for the platform.

One year after the official release of the Windows Phone Tools for developers, Microsoft shares some info on how things evolved in the meantime.

One thing that Microsoft seems proud of it the fact that its Windows Phone Tools, which are available for free, have been already downloaded over 1.5 million times (you can find them on Softpedia too, via this link).

The said Windows Phone Developer Tools include of Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone and Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone.

“We announced that the tools were free, would always be free, and set about the next phase of our developer campaign – educating and exciting the developer community about the limitless possibilities available on Windows Phone,” Microsoft's Brandon Watson notes in a recent blog post.

He also announced that the AppHub community (the developer community for Windows Phone 7) has a number of 36,000 members at the moment, and that around 1,200 of them adhere to the platform each and every week.

The company also unveiled the fact that the number of applications available for download in the Windows Phone Marketplace is close to 12,000 (though third-party Marketplace tracking sites suggest that the number went above that mark).

From the available software, 7,500 applications are paid, while 1,100 apps generate developer revenue using the Microsoft Advertising Ad Control, Microsoft announced.

Other highlights from the company's announcement would include:

- each user downloads an average of 12 apps each month
- 62% of all apps pass certification on their first attempt
- average time to certification is of 1.8 days
- 44% of paid apps come with a trial version
- 40% of the fully registered developers published apps

“Now we are dedicated to evolving the platform to enable more developers to create amazing apps; more possibilities, more functionality, more customers and more markets,” Brandon Watson states.

“At Mobile World Congress we shared a glimpse of what’s to come at MIX11 and we are excited to show developers what’s coming to customers by the end of the year. We look forward to outlining our purpose and principles for our forthcoming release when we get to MIX11 starting April 12th.”