IDC: Windows Phone 7 marketplace ramping up “faster than Android”
The Windows Phone 7 marketplace is ramping up faster than Android, and even when compared to the iPhone App store (red line) it does not look too bad. (WP7 graph from WP7Applist.com) — We continue to see rather odd stories …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 launch in late 2010 arrived into a market where Android had already taken the top US smartphone spot per Gartner's August 2010 numbers and kept gaining share in Quantcast's web-browsing data — leaving the new platform fighting on two fronts against entrenched iOS and Android catalogs. A Distimo report in late November gave the first detailed look at the WP7 Marketplace's catalog size and pricing; today's IDC read-out extends that picture with the growth curve itself, claiming WP7 added apps faster than Android did over a comparable stretch.
The claim matters because catalog size has become the de facto scoreboard in this year's iPhone-versus-Android fan wars, and a third ecosystem's viability is judged almost entirely by whether developers show up early. IDC's framing — that even against the iPhone App Store the trajectory 'does not look too bad' — is the strongest independent datapoint yet for Microsoft's argument that the platform deserves developer attention.
First-order effects
- Developers deciding where to spend the next quarter get a concrete signal that porting to WP7 is worth the effort while the catalog is still thin enough for early apps to stand out.
- Microsoft gains an analyst-sourced counter-narrative against the 'third ecosystem is dead on arrival' framing that dominated discussion through 2010.
Second-order effects
- OEMs and carriers shipping WP7 handsets — competing on shelves against a fast-growing Android lineup — acquire a retail talking point that the app gap is closing on a measured curve, not just in marketing copy.
- Android and iOS face pressure to keep their own headline app counts climbing, since IDC has now set WP7's early ramp as the benchmark both incumbents will be graphed against.
Third-order effects
- If early-ramp comparisons become the standard way platforms are scored, competition among mobile ecosystems shifts from raw catalog size toward what the Distimo data already probed — pricing mix and content quality — where a late entrant can still differentiate.
- The smartphone OS market hardens into a three-way contest in which each player's quarterly app-curve chart, not just handset shipments, shapes developer and carrier commitments — though IDC's own track record on such projections remains unproven at this point.
The trend: Mobile platform competition in the post-iPhone era is increasingly fought on app-marketplace growth curves, with Microsoft positioning WP7 as the credible third ecosystem against an Android surge that claimed the US lead in mid-2010.