apps
Windows Phone Marketplace passes 80,000 Mark
Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace is now happily the third biggest mobile app ecosystem with 82,234 apps behind Apple’s iOS with 550,000 apps and Google’s Android with 450,000 apps. The Windows Marketplace has achieved the 80,000 apps mark with a rate of 340 apps per day. Although the rate of apps per day has dropped since January when it saw 375 apps being added on a daily basis, the company has taken just under 5 months to double the number of apps it showcases.
The Windows Phone Marketplace hit 50,000 apps on December 27, 60,000 apps on January 22, and then 70,000 apps on February 23. To date with the figure of 82,234 apps, it has a total of 20,237 different developers. According to the statement released by Microsoft, the post attributed the positive outcome to the maturing Mango platform and also the entry of Nokia into the fray with the Windows Phone OS. The blog also states that 67% of the apps offered are free, 22% are paid apps while 10% are paid with free trials. With the ecosystem’s current growth rate, the 100,000 apps mark will reportedly be reached in May.
Apple is well known to be a company that continues to push the envelope when it comes to technological advancements and firsts. This time around, Cupertino has introduced the first ever automated security update for Mac computers in order to assist them in preventing attacks from recently identified bugs, which are also the very same bugs that that security researchers have pinpointed and warned against, as those could be the gateway for hackers to actually gain remote control of machines.
Over in New Jersey, District Judge William Martini has come up with a ruling that the police are not required to actually pick up a warrant before opening a fake Instagram account. This is because the bogus account could actually be used to receive pictures shared by a suspect, and some folks wonder whether this would require a search warrant to be issued beforehand. Not so, according to Judge Martini in his ruling that stated whenever Instagram users post photos on the site, they happen to be practicing “consensual sharing.”
In other words, users who put up photos on Instagram are more or less in the know that should they “follow” or “friend” others, they will also end up sharing their pictures with them. All in all, one should always be extra careful with whatever one shares with others online, as you can never quite tell how something might end up to bit you in the rear some day down the road.
Both iOS and Android number close to a million apps each on their respective app stores, which is one of the reasons why smartphone users flock to either operating system. Of course there are other factors, such as hardware, pricing, availability and so on, but it is safe to say that app availability plays a big role as well. Well Blackberry seems to think so as well as they have revealed that the Blackberry World app store currently sits at about 120,000 apps, which while still pretty small compared to iOS and Android, is a pretty huge deal considering that the platform and its accompanying devices were only launched earlier this year! Blackberry’s CEO Thorsten Heins praised the thriving ecosystem, which we guess was boosted by Blackberry’s efforts where they held events to encourage developers to submit as many apps as they can, and even offering monetary rewards on top of earnings for every app successfully submitted to Blackberry World. We can see that Blackberry is going for quantity at the moment, and we suppose there are quality apps within those 120,000, but for now it looks like as far as apps are concerned, they may very well be edging Windows Phone out of the picture!