It has been an interesting year for Microsoft, which has achieved so much within the past year – right from Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and other projects like Windows Phone 7.8. Looking at these developments over the past year, Todd Brix at Microsoft says, on the Windows Phone Developer Blog that there has been a 40% rise developer revenue in the past 30 days since the SDK launch. It is surprising that this statistic is expected to rise even further as more and more apps are made for this platform. It looks like Windows Phone is finally ready to get some attention from the developers, even though other platforms like iPhone and Android are still a greater priority.
Talking of more statistics, Todd said that an average Windows Phone user downloads almost 54 apps to personalize their experience on the platform and in correlation to that, more than 75000 new apps have been approved in the last year, apart from 300000 app upgrades. This shows the increasing customer and developer engagement on the platform. More and more users have been enthusiastic about customizing their Windows Phone experience, which is reflected by the fact that 85% of the users indicated in the customer feedback that they will be willing to use Live apps – which show dynamic information on the Start screen, over the normal ones.
Microsoft, in its efforts to popularize the platform, has expanded the market availability by over 5 times. It has grown from availability in just 35 markets to more than 191 on the release of Windows Phone 8. Even Windows Phone 7.8 has been made available in more than 95 markets. Other developments for Microsoft in the past year include in app purchases and new payment channels like Paypal and Alipay. Payment methods like carrier billing have also been immensely popular among the users, who prefer it over any other method of purchasing apps. It has driven over two times of paid app purchases and made the purchase process much easier.
