Windows Phone Marketplace Maturation

What a difference a year makes.  In October of 2010 Microsoft launched its newest Mobile OS, Windows Phone 7.  With it came a centralized place to browse, locate and purchase your favorite apps and games.  There wasn’t many to start than a little got added each week.  Weeks turned into months and with each coming month more must have apps and games appeared.  Yes most of the apps were ports from iOS and Android and more expensive than their counterparts but they were arriving.  July was the best month yet.  Top official brand apps were being released left and right with hardly a days break.  To say that the cavernous gap between iOS & Android top apps and Windows Phone top apps were closing fast would be an understatement.  The trend has made it almost a moot point to point to lack of apps as a viable reason not to choose the Windows Phone platform.  The downside to so many new apps crashing the party is the first, punctual guests get overlooked.  The app developers and publishers who staked their claim on Windows Phone 7 early have not been resting on their laurels though, not in the least.

Both official and 3rd party devs have been churning out updates to fill in the gaps in their own apps. The added benefit to Windows Phone users is the more robust app & game ecosystem that it has produced. Remember when there was no adequate YouTube app? Now SuperTube (pictured above) & LazyTube are slugging it out for the title of most wonderful.  Impossible Shoota updates so frequently with value added features its like buying a new game over and over again. ESPN Scorecenter is a welcomed recent addition to the family of sports apps.  ScoreMobile though has been there since just after launch and has managed to pretty much stay toe to toe with the ESPN app and keeps adding delightful eye candy to make the user experience top notch.  These are just a couple of examples of the marketplace maturation.

So while those stuck on numbers fixate on the total app gap between iOS, Android & Windows Phone I’ll keep fixating on the beauty of maturity.  You know the type, when a boy becomes a man, yes that type of maturity. Mango, with its expanded API support, will drive a new flood of apps & games into the marketplace.  Feel free to indulge all you want just don’t forget to overlook the tried and true apps that have been there from day 1 and have matured to keep users of Windows Phone rating their experience high to very high in satisfaction.

Microsoft’s baby is about to turn 1 years old in a couple of months,and relish the memories of this first year.  The first “must have app”, the delight of seeing your avatar for the first time, the smoothness of Zune, and the calming realization that you could let go of the fear of constant rebooting. Oh and the awesome surprises of getting that notification that you have apps ready to be updated.