One of the biggest attractions at this edition of the Mobile World Congress were undoubtedly the Windows Phone 8 powered smartphones. Several announcements from prime manufacturers like Nokia are surely indicative of the slow yet steady rise in the customer base of these smartphones. Although the platform is yet to reach its full potential, such positive moves from Nokia and other companies are sure to perk up interest among consumers.
There are several contributing factors behind the increase in interest in the Windows Phone platform. Reports indicate that till date there are more that 130,000 apps on the Windows Phone 8 platform. Microsoft asserts that it has seen a 75% increase in the number of apps downloaded and more than a 91% increase in the revenue generated from the sales of paid apps since the launch of Windows Phone 8. The technology giant further added that more than 15,000 Windows Phone 8 specific apps and 40,000 developer registrations have taken place since the launch of the Windows Phone 8 OS. A sizeable number of Windows Phone 8 SDK downloads have also taken place. These are clearly encouraging signs for the company. In fact, these trends have prompted the company to release a new Windows Phone Development app, which is designed to aid developers in accessing metrics related to their published apps without having to login to a PC (or rather, directly from their Windows Phone 8 device).
Although most apps present on iOS and Android are available on Windows Phone as well, there are still a few big names missing. Instagram for one was expected to be announced at the Windows Phone 8 launch event. Microsoft has also failed to follow through on some unfulfilled announcements from last year. The Pandora app announced last year is yet to release. Pundits and critics continue to ponder over the reason behind these delays. A few assert that Microsoft doesn’t possess enough resources to convince developers into investing time on these apps.
There are still others who claim that technical issues with apps like Instagram are preventing their launch on Windows Phone. Critics have also suggested that Instagram simply doesn’t see any potential market in Windows Phone and hence isn’t too keen to expedite the development of the app. All said, these are niggling issues and the platform is undoubtedly gaining momentum. All that is needed is a little push by Microsoft to get the big names on board and the usual criticism of most analysts, that of missing apps, will be a thing of the past.
