Windows Phone 7 Hits 10,000 Apps

One of the key metrics in the smartphone battle is the number of apps in your App Store (or whatever vendors are legally allowed to call them without drawing a lawsuit from Cupertino). On those grounds, Microsoft has had a great week, with news that Microsoft is the fastest smartphone maker yet to hit the psychologically important 10,000-app milestone.

As things stand, Microsoft has a long way to go. The Business Insider blog posted its own count of apps earlier this month. Apple's iPhone led the chart with 350,000 apps, Google's Android was next with 250,000, RIM's BlackBerry had 20,000, and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 had 9,000 at the time.

Maybe Microsoft's strategy of letting employees moonlight by developing Windows Phone 7 apps is paying off? There are a lot of smart developers inside Microsoft's walls. Getting their competitive and entrepreneurial juices flowing at the same time is a great strategy for seeding a Windows Phone 7 market.

Offhand, I asked one Microsoft developer, Dave Mendlen, at the end of a recent interview if he had any Windows Phone 7 apps in progress. The senior director of developer marketing at Microsoft said he'd already finished a TiVo remote control app for his wife, and he was working on a Netflix app.

Posted by Scott Bekker on March 17, 2011 at 11:58 AM