{"id":4856,"date":"2011-09-07T14:47:42","date_gmt":"2011-09-07T13:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/4856-windows-phone-7-apps-stats-and-future.html"},"modified":"2011-09-07T14:47:42","modified_gmt":"2011-09-07T13:47:42","slug":"windows-phone-7-apps-stats-and-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/4856-windows-phone-7-apps-stats-and-future.html","title":{"rendered":"Windows Phone 7 apps, stats and future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Justin Angel, a former Microsoft employee who worked on Silverlight, has posted his <a href=\"http:\/\/justinangel.net\/#BlogPost=WindowsPhone7MarketplaceStatistics\" target=\"_blank\">analysis<\/a> of the 24,505 apps he found in the Windows Phone 7 marketplace, exploiting a <a href=\"http:\/\/dotnet.dzone.com\/articles\/windows-phone-marketplace-your\" target=\"_blank\">loophole<\/a> that lets you get the download links. A few highlights:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>97% of the apps are not obfuscated, meaning that it is trivial (with easily available tools) to decompile the source. <\/li>\n<li>90% are Silverlight vs 10% XNA. This is not so much an indicator of the popularity of the two frameworks, but more an indicator of how many apps are graphic-rich games rather than some other kind of utility. Of course if you are making a very simple app, Silverlight is easier than XNA, so that may be a factor too. <\/li>\n<li>99% are C# vs 1% Visual Basic and a smattering of F#. A fascinating stat that makes me wonder what is the future of Visual Basic. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are more interesting stats about libraries and components used, for which I refer you to the original post.<\/p>\n<p>Does it matter? Well, Windows Phone 7 has not been a big success so far, though the reasons for that are not so much the quality of the OS or the ease of developing apps, but rather its low profile at retail and the fact that most operators and manufacturers don\u2019t really need it: Apple and Android between them pretty much have the market.<\/p>\n<p>That said, there are a few reasons why Windows Phone or some evolution of it may yet be significant. Nokia is betting on it, and while Nokia is undoubtedly in difficulties, this must work in Microsoft\u2019s favour. Further, fear uncertainty and doubt surrounding Android patent and copyright issues may persuade some industry players to give Windows Phone another look.<\/p>\n<p>Perhaps more significantly, when Microsoft unveils its developer strategy at the BUILD conference next week, it is likely that the application model in Windows Phone, or some evolution of it, will integrate with what is planned for Windows 8. NVIDIA is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2011\/09\/07\/nvidia_wp7\/\" target=\"_blank\">already talking<\/a> about how Windows 8 will run Windows Phone apps.<\/p>\n<p>For these reasons I believe there is at least a glimmer of hope for Microsoft in the mobile world; certainly the developer story to be officially told next week will be an interesting one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Justin Angel, a former Microsoft employee who worked on Silverlight, has posted his analysis of the 24,505 apps he found in the Windows Phone 7 marketplace, exploiting a loophole that lets you get the download links. A few highlights: 97% of the apps are not obfuscated, meaning that it is trivial (with easily available tools) &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/4856-windows-phone-7-apps-stats-and-future.html\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Windows Phone 7 apps, stats and future<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,77,80,94],"tags":[225,586,599,825,1012],"class_list":["post-4856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-microsoft","category-silverlight","category-software-development","category-visual-studio","tag-build","tag-microsoft","tag-mobile","tag-silverlight","tag-windows-phone-7"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itwriting.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}