14 DAY TRIAL // Last week, WinAppUpdate reported that Windows 8’s very own Windows Store provided access to more than 20,000 apps, most of them free, but it appears that the final number of applications available for Windows 8 users is much smaller.
McAkins Online, one of the websites tracking the number of apps added to the Store, claims that Microsoft’s Windows Store only holds a total of 13,783 apps at this point, again most of them free.
How come there’s such a significant difference between the two reports? McAkins Online has a pretty simple explanation.
“I stated it in the past, that the figure I report are not some esoteric figures from the Store that cannot be verified. What I report is what a typical User will see in the Store when you turn off Localization in the Store. I am aware that WinAppUpdate is reporting 20000+ Apps in the Store, but this is inclusive Apps that typical user will not see because they are in the Store accreditation pipeline,” Denny McAkins wrote on his blog.
Leaving all these reports aside, it’s pretty clear that Windows 8’s Windows Store is growing bigger, but sadly for both Microsoft and those who are already using the latest OS, the growth pace is much slower than Microsoft’s very own expectations.
Some company executives have previously hinted that Windows 8 would record a very strong growth after the new operating system becomes generally available, with some early estimates pointing to 100,000 apps available in the Store by February 2013.
Judging by these figures, this isn’t going to happen, although some sources familiar with the matter have suggested that several hundreds of apps are submitted to the Store every day.
The Windows Store still lacks apps developed by world-renowned companies, so users’ options are still limited when it comes to browsers, email clients and many other software categories.