Windows Phone Marketplace passes 40,000 apps
After celebrating its first anniversary by passing the 35,000 app mark in mid October, the Windows Phone Marketplace has now passed the 40,000 app and games submission mark. Content is being added at the rate of 165 items per day.
Context & Ripple Effects
The Marketplace had reached 10,000 apps in March and 30,000 apps by August, when Microsoft also opened submissions for Mango. Passing 35,000 in mid-October and 40,000 a month later shows the catalogue expanding at a materially faster pace than its early-year base.
The milestone matters because a phone platform’s software catalogue is a core part of its appeal to both buyers and developers. The reported 165 daily submissions give Microsoft a measurable content-growth story rather than a one-off threshold.
First-order effects
- Windows Phone Marketplace buyers gain a catalogue exceeding 40,000 app and game submissions, while developers enter a storefront with a larger and more competitive inventory.
- Microsoft can point to a reported intake of 165 items per day when promoting the Marketplace to prospective developers and phone buyers.
Second-order effects
- A faster-growing catalogue raises the importance for developers of discovery and differentiation inside the Marketplace, rather than simply being among a small set of available apps.
- Mango’s opening to submissions is positioned as part of a broader developer-content pipeline: continued submissions make platform updates more consequential for what reaches Marketplace users.
Third-order effects
- If the submission pace persists, Windows Phone’s competitive position will depend increasingly on sustaining a two-sided marketplace loop in which catalogue growth attracts users and users attract developers.
- App-count milestones are becoming a practical benchmark for mobile platforms, shifting competition beyond handset software to the breadth and freshness of each platform’s content ecosystem.
The trend: Mobile-platform competition is increasingly being measured through the growth rate and depth of the developer marketplace behind each operating system.