14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft has overhauled the store in Windows 10 to provide a similar look and feel on PCs and smartphones, especially as part of Redmond’s push for universal apps, and the company says that its efforts are already paying off.
In new Windows Store trends posted on the official Windows blog, Microsoft reveals that interest in store apps is significantly bigger than in Windows 8.1, with customers spending more money in the store than in the previous version of the operating system.
Windows 8/8.1 was the first to introduce the store, but Metro apps, as they were often referred to, experienced a pretty moderate to low success, with most people claiming they were more appropriate for touch devices rather than for PCs.
One store for everything
But with Windows 10, this appears to be changing, and interest in store apps is growing, according to Microsoft’s own statistics.
“As announced in January, over 200 million PCs, tablets, and phones across the globe are now running Windows 10, making it the fastest growing version of Windows in history. Over 3 billion visits have been made to the Store since the Windows 10 launch. While Windows 8.x still accounts for the majority of Store downloads, Windows 10 users are the fastest growing download segment, growing both in volume and total percentage of downloads,” Microsoft explained.
“This past holiday season we saw double the number of paid transactions for PC and tablet customers over the previous holiday season, and Windows 10 customer generate 4.5x more revenue per device when compared to Windows 8.”
Microsoft no longer provides any figures regarding the number of apps in the store, but it’s very clear that the company is pushing hard to convince developers to create universal apps that could work on both PCs and smartphones.
At the same time, with the “one store for everything” approach, Redmond is also attempting to bring more people in the store, as apps are no longer the only content offered for download and purchase. Music, TV series, movies, and games are also available in the store, and very soon, the company will also add extensions for Edge browser.