Windows Phone Marketplace Has Over 50,000 Apps

Windows Phone Marketplace, the software portal that accompanies Microsoft’s mobile operating system, now has a number of more than 50,000 applications available for users to download.

Nothing has been officially confirmed on this for the time being, but third-party websites tracking the Marketplace activity say that the number was reached.

The storefront has been live for roughly fifteen months now, which makes this milestone a very important one.

When launched in October last year, the Marketplace had less than 1,000 applications, and it managed to add over 30,000 of them during the first year of availability alone.

Back in October, the Marketplace had a number of around 35,000 applications, and reached 40,000 last month.

Since then, 10,000 more apps were added, though not all of them are now available for consumers.

Not to mention that the figure shows how many apps were published by December 27th, which leaves a few more days of this year for more of them to be included in the storefront.

One thing that should be noted is that, while All About Windows Phone claims that over 50,100 apps were already published, another similar website, WP7applist, notes that only 47,325 of them are available.

Since the last 10,000 apps have been added in only 40 days, things certainly look promising for Windows Phone in the year to come.

More handsets running under the platform are expected to become available next year, many of which will be manufactured by Nokia, and that should attract more developers to it.

Some of the latest forecasts regarding the performance on Microsoft’s mobile OS suggested that it would manage to become one of the top three platforms in the world, and that the Marketplace would get pretty close to Google’s Android Market.

Of course, that will happen only in a few years’ time, but it appears that at least the Windows Phone Marketplace is off for a good start. As for the OS, it might grab up to 6.2 percent of the market during the next year, some suggest.