14 DAY TRIAL // The number of applications and games available at the moment for download for the owners of handsets running under the Windows Phone operating system is ever expanding, with over 30,000 software already up for grabs in the dedicated storefront, the Windows Phone Marketplace.
For the time being, the number was not officially confirmed by Microsoft, but some of the websites that list the applications available in the storefront did show that the new milestone was reached.
The Windows Phone Marketplace was launched roughly a year ago, with somewhere around 1,000 applications available for those who rushed to purchase a new Windows Phone device.
The number of apps in the official portal increased progressively in the past year, and the same applies to the number of developers who chose to come up with software for the Windows Phone platform.
Last year, there were around 10,000 developers registered for the Marketplace, now there are over four times that number, although it appears that only a little over 8,000 have published apps on the storefront.
Out of a total of over 30,000 apps in the Marketplace, around 1,000 were added in the past two weeks, the Windows Phone App List website shows.
Moreover, their stats unveiled the fact that around 47 percent of the applications there are free, that 20 percent of them are paid and feature a trial, and that the rest of 33 percent are paid without a trial.
For a platform that is less than a year old, 30,000 applications in the official storefront seem like a lot, though it appears that even more of them might become available in the near future.
Microsoft is gearing up for the release of a new flavor of their Windows Phone platform, called Mango, which should bring along new applications in the Marketplace.
The Windows Phone 7.1 SDK to support the new launch was already made available for download, though it is only a release candidate for the time being, while the submission of applications for Mango was already open since last week.
Some analysts suggest that the Windows Phone OS is on its way to become one of the three top mobile platforms on the market and that the Marketplace will grow accordingly, and it seems that things already started on this route.
