It’s no secret that the struggles Windows Phone has partially had to do with the apps, or lack thereof. It’s hard to get people to change over from what they are on already, let alone if what you want them to go to doesn’t have many of the applications they are familiar with using. Lets face it, most of what we do on a Smartphone involves the use of these and nothing is going to change that.

Unfortunately for Microsoft, if the people aren’t coming then the developers aren’t making any apps for the Windows Store. They are in the middle of an all mighty predicament. This is why being late to the mobile boom was such a critical mistake on their behalf.

While it’s only a small amount compared to iOS and Android, the Windows Phone store now has over 200,00 apps officially that have been accounted for by the Redmond company. They’ve made great progress and doing everything right of late, and this is a good sign that things are continuing to blossom and go in the right direction.

It also has been noticeable the amount of applications that have come in thick and fast because we have covered many of them ourselves, and it seemed like a lot. It seems MS was expecting this big boom in use as they had already predicted that over the next 12 months a huge part that they are now behind in would be wiped away, and they would be really close to having the numbers of the others. That’s a lot to do in a year, and frankly, we don’t believe it for a second, but we do agree they will close the gap.

Looking back at the start of 2013, this is the same store that went down for a second time in as many months. They really didn’t look like they were at the same standards as the others. Then just after mid-year in August, we were informed that the WP store had amassed over 170,000 apps. That means in about four and a half months we have seen almost a sixth in growth.

To put that into perspective with somebody like Apple, they had just eclipsed the million milestone in the U.S alone last week.

Via: Windows Phone Developer Blog