Windows Phone 7's Stable Of Third-Party Applications Reaches 11,500

The Windows Phone Marketplace now has 11,500 paid and free applications and the development tools for building software for Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 operating system have been downloaded 1.5 million times.

Those were among the statistics Brandon Watson, Microsoft Windows Phone senior director, threw out in a blog post Thursday as he touted what he said was the market momentum of the Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system.

But Watson did not disclose any numbers about developer revenues generated by Windows Phone 7 sales. And some respondents to the blog took Watson to task for not offering that information. "There is only one number that actually matters: REVENUE," said a response from "Istroud."

Watson's blog comes as Microsoft gears up for its Mix11 conference in Las Vegas later this month where the company is expected to offer details about an upcoming new release of the Windows Phone 7 development platform.

Microsoft is playing catch-up with rivals Apple and Google in the smartphone market and the company is counting on Windows Phone 7, which began shipping in mobile handsets in October, to make up some lost ground.

In January Microsoft executives said manufacturers had shipped some 2 million Windows Phone 7-based devices. But the company hasn't updated those numbers and has never disclosed sales statistics for Windows Phone 7.

Earlier this week market researcher IDC surprised many when it issued a report predicting that unit sales of Windows Phone 7 smartphones will surpass Apple iPhone sales by 2015, taking second place only to devices based on Google's Android system.

Next: Microsoft: No Padding Of Our App Numbers

Attracting third-party applications will be a critical element of Windows Phone 7's success or failure – hence Watson's blog. Apple's App Store now has more than 350,000 applications for the company's iPhone and iPad devices.

Of the 11,500 applications in Microsoft's online store, nearly 7,500 are paid apps, Watson said. "We've been very focused on the quality of the apps in the Marketplace since we first announced the platform one year ago, and we've done this by doing what we do best for developers; giving them great tools, tons of sample code and unparalleled support through our incredible developer and platform evangelism team," Watson said. "As a result, we've got apps, thousands of them. In fact our ecosystem generated 10,000 apps faster than anyone else, without padding the stats.

"We recognize the importance of getting great apps on our platform and not artificially inflating the number of actual apps available to customers by listing 'wallpapers' as a category, or perhaps allowing competitor's apps to run on the platform to increase 'tonnage,'" Watson wrote. "We also don't believe in the practice of counting 'lite' apps as unique quality content. In reality they only exist because developers can't have a Trial API and must therefore do extra work. Finally, we don't double and triple count apps, which are submitted in multiple languages.

"It's great to have a platform full of apps, but most developers we speak to are concerned with making money. That’s going to be a function of a few things. You might think that the primary driver is [the] number of handsets in [the] market. Based on the conversations we are having with some of our developers, many are telling us that they are seeing more revenue on our platform than competing platforms, despite the fact that we cannot yet match the sheer number of handsets being sold. For them it's about truly setting their own price and the ability to get noticed," Watson said.

The Microsoft executive said Windows Phone customers have downloaded an average of 12 apps each month, a rate he described as "very healthy demand" given that Windows Phone 7-based devices have been widely available for only four months.

Watson said the Windows Phone development community has 36,000 members who have paid the $99 membership fee and 1,200 developers are joining every week.