14 DAY TRIAL // We’re two weeks away from the public debut of the new Windows 8 and the built-in Windows Store has officially crossed the 3,000 app milestone.
It may not sound impressive at all, but it’s actually a very important moment for the overall growth of the Windows Store, especially because several analysts have warned that the new OS needs at least 5,000 apps at launch. In order to succeed, that is.
Surprisingly, Microsoft expects to see approximately 100,000 apps in Windows Store in 90 days after its launch which is kind of impossible given the fact that it barely crossed the 3k apps milestone.
Development of Windows Store apps however is very likely to grow after the public debut of the new operating system and that’s exactly what Microsoft hopes to happen.
“We’re expecting to aggressively pursue over 100,000 apps over the first three months,” Keith Lorizio, vice president of U.S. sales and marketing for Microsoft, said in an interview with Beet.TV.
“Now as soon as Windows 8 goes live on Oct. 26, the marketplace - the available marketplace - is a billion plus consumers. And in order to reach our goal, which is a conservative estimate of 400 million units in marketplace by July 1, we know that we have to have a very very healthy ecosystem of apps. And we’re putting millions of dollars against that effort and working with publishers to get their apps live as quickly as possible.”
The good thing is that most of the apps available in Windows Store are freeware tools, with “Games” still holding the leading spot with 18 percent of the apps.