What numbers matter to Microsoft? Windows Phone Developer Tools have been downloaded some 1.5 million times. The Windows Phone developer community boasts 36,000 members. The Windows Phone 7 ecosystem contains around 11,500 applications.
Based on those numbers, a back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests one application published for approximately every 3.13 developers who signed onto AppHub. It also suggests that, out of the total Windows Phone Developer Tools downloads, less than 1 percent translated into a published application.
Is that bad?
"The numbers are not bad, actually," Al Hilwa, an analyst with IDC, wrote in an e-mail to me. "I think developers gravitate towards offerings inside their ecosystems first, but if they feel that such ecosystems are dysfunctional they might jump ship."
Microsoft already maintains a robust .NET/Windows and Microsoft tools ecosystem, he added, "so they are leveraging it well but have also created incentives to bring others from the outside, primarily ISVs who have developed Web, Apple or Android apps or games."
Hilwa's earlier research note to media suggested that Microsoft has surpassed certain application milestones "faster than Android did in its day, albeit it is easier to bring apps to a second- or third-mobile platform than the first time around." Android apparently took 11 months to reach the 10,000-application milestone, something that took Windows Phone 7 around six months.
IDC also released a mildly controversial note earlier this week, suggesting that Windows Phone 7 would overtake both Research In Motion's BlackBerry franchise and Apple's iOS by 2015, largely thanks to its partnership with Nokia. Personally, I had reservations with that report's opacity; without knowing the inputs or data that went into IDC's predictive analysis, it's difficult to take at face value the firm's rather precise predictions of, say, Windows Phone holding 20.9 percent of the market four years from now. Nor does IDC's report acknowledge the obvious uncertainties in making such predictions.
All that aside, at least one research firm seems to back Microsoft's claim that the Windows Phone 7 application ecosystem is a healthy one. Of course, by titling that blog posting, "The Windows Phone 7 Numbers That Matter," Watson implicitly acknowledged the giant elephant in the room: consumer sales figures.
Of which we know nothing. Microsoft executives claim Windows Phone 7 sales are roughly in line with that of other first-generation smartphone platforms, and they've confirmed that some 2 million units have been sold by manufacturers to retailers, but we still have no idea about gross total consumer activations.
That in itself is telling: companies aren't exactly shy to share when their products are selling in record numbers. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes over at ZDnet marched right out this morning and called a spade a spade, offering up a comment by Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president of marketing and strategic alliances at NetApplications.com: "We are tracking Windows Phone 7, but it hasn't gained enough market share yet to show up in our reports."
You can see for yourself how NetApplications' chart for operating-system market share lacks a Windows Phone presence. On the other hand, I wrote last month about how analytics firm Flurry had seen a marked rise in the number of Windows Phone 7 application starts, following rumors (and then confirmed news) of the Nokia partnership. So maybe third-party developers are indeed embracing the platform on the expectation that it'll pay future dividends?
I don't know; I don't know what I'm doing for dinner, much less four years from now. I do know that the Windows Phone team is a very dedicated group of people, and they've produced a platform solid enough in its philosophy and mechanics to warrant a look from anyone in the market for a smartphone. But it's felt lately like the platform is pushing against some substantial headwinds: not only robust competition from Apple iPhone and Google Android, but also things like this whole software-update snafu. "Shaky" is the term I want to use, in describing my feelings about Windows Phone 7's prospects.
But hey! On a more positive note, at least in the United States, two Windows Phone 7 devices--the Dell Venue Pro and HTC HD7--are currently in the delivery stage for the "NoDo" update, which includes cut-and-paste functionality. (The other three remain in the "Testing" stage, which is apparently controlled by the carriers.)
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