A Year Later – The Windows Phone 7 Numbers That Matter (by the Windows Team)

• 1.5 Million – The Windows Phone Developer Tools, consisting of Visual
  Studio Express for Windows Phone and Expression Blend 4 for Windows Phone have
  been downloaded over 1.5 million times. Put differently, the number of downloads
  equates to the size of the entire population of Philadelphia. (Somewhere a NY
  Giants fan just screamed.)
• 36,000 – People are talking a lot about the number of developers in
  their ecosystem. It would be easy for us to say that we had 1.5 million given
  the developer tools downloaded, or we could talk about the number of people we
  have on mailing lists, but we won’t. We’d rather give a nod to the 36,000
  members of the AppHub community who have voted with their wallets
  and become members of the Windows Phone developer community.
• “The number:” 11,500 – What is an app? It’s a question that really
  begs some scrutinizing. For us, from the beginning, we have always been focused
  on quality over quantity. We recognize the importance of getting great apps on
  our platform and not artificially inflating the number of actual apps available
  to customer by listing “wallpapers” as a category, or perhaps allowing
  competitor’s apps to run on the platform to increase “tonnage.” 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.

  We respect that determining what is
  or is not a quality app is subjective, for example eBooks as titles will
  probably find their way onto the platform en masse. Still, we believe we have
  the standards and processes in place to continue ensuring that customers have
  the ability to quickly and easily locate and acquire quality apps and games that
  extend the value of their phone.

  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 & Platform Evangelism team. 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.

• 7,500 – 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 number of
  handsets in 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. So far, we have nearly 7,500 apps that are
  either paid in our Marketplace.
• 1,200 – While the 36,000 registered developers are nice to talk
  about, the 1,200 newly registered developers we are adding every week is
  incredibly encouraging. Developers are pragmatists and they are going where
  there is ample opportunity.
• 1,100 – Speaking of ad funded apps, there are now 1,100 apps that are
  generating developer revenue using the Microsoft Advertising Ad Control. Even more
  impressive is the double digit growth rate of new ad funded apps that are being
  added to the Windows Phone Marketplace every month. Check out how two student developers and a part-time hobbyist turned their apps into lucrative
  revenue streams.
• 12 – Customers love our apps. Love them. Windows Phone customers
  download an average of 12 apps each month. Considering that the phone has only
  been widely available for around 4 months, that’s very healthy demand.
• 1.8 – Nothing upsets developers more than not knowing what is going
  on with their app during certification. Since opening the Marketplace for
  application ingestion developers have experienced an average time to
  certification of 1.8 days. Certification can yield a pass or fail, but
  developers get an answer on average in days – not weeks, nor months.
• 62% – When developers are given clear and prescriptive guidance about
  what is expected of them and their app, it’s only fair to assume that apps will
  make it through certification quickly. They do. 62% of all apps pass
  certification on their first attempt. We know that we don’t have it perfect yet
  and we continue to work with our community to find out how we can be better. For
  example, when we updated the policy regarding the requirement to provide a
  support alias based on developer feedback, pass rates grew by almost 10 full
  percentage points. We will continue to listen to our developer community to
  ensure that they have a voice in the vetting process while still delivering high
  quality apps to our collective customers.
• 44% – Of all the paid apps in the Marketplace, 44% of them include
  access to a Trial version. Our developers rely on the Trial API available for
  Windows Phone 7 to drive consumer confidence in their purchases. Trying before
  you buy…what a concept.
• 40% – The statistic that gets me the most excited and speaks the most
  to the work my team has yet to do is the percentage of registered developers who
  have published their apps. 40% of the fully registered developer population has
  published an app or game, yet 60% have not yet published. That’s incredibly
  exciting when you consider the amount of creativity which is still
  forthcoming.
• 1 – It only takes one idea. One idea to get you started down the path
  of building an amazing app or game, reaching millions of people, or maybe just
  showing off to your friends. It only takes one.

Interesting numbers, indeed!