The Windows Phone Marketplace has now passed the 50,000 app and games submission mark. Content is being added at the rate of 265 items per day. At the time of writing, 50,126 items have been published. Of these, 17,276 were added in the last 90 days and 8,010 were added in the last 30 days. These items come from 13,002 different publishers.
The 50,000 mark, which has been reached sooner than we estimated, is a key milestone, but more important is the accelerating growth of the Marketplace. It took just over a year to get to 40,000 apps, but just 40 days to add the next 10,000 apps. That bodes well for Windows Phone in 2012.
We're going to see a lot of "Windows Phone smartphone market share will be X% in 2012" stories in the next week or two as writers move through the retrospectives and opinions, and Digitimes pitches in with their prediction today (they're going with 6.2%, if you're keeping track). The one thing to keep in mind on all of these is this... nobody can tell the future, or what is going to happen to any platform. "Events, dear boy" will drive the percentages as much as smoothing out curves and following the mathematical trends. But we can have fun making our own guesses.
The Nokia Lumia 710 will be available on T-Mobile USA, from January 11th 2012, at a cost of $49.99 (after a $50 mail-in-rebate card). It will be Nokia's first Windows Phone product in the US and is an important milestone for the company as it looks to rebuild its smartphone market share in the competitive US market.
Nokia's second Windows Phone handset, the Nokia Lumia 710, has now started shipping. Initially it is going on sale in Taiwan, with Singapore, Hong Kong, India and Russia following in the next seven days. A global roll-out will follow in the weeks and months ahead. The Nokia 710, with an estimated retail price (before taxes and subsidies) of €270 / £230 / $360, offers a more affordable option for those looking to buy a Windows Phone device.
After a happy online jumble of "it's coming, it should be here today, it's here for me, is it in the Marketplace?" from various sites, tweets and Facebook status updates, you can finally pick up the Xbox Companion App for your Windows Phone... and iOS devices. Using your Windows Phone as an alternative controller (think of it like a TV remote rather than gaming controller), the app will allow you to search Bing, browse content from the Marketplace, and control media playback on the Xbox.
Everyone's favourite flight simulator for Windows Phone, Infinite Flight, just got itself a big update, v2.1 (changelog below), adding in two major new planes as well as a number of enhancements and fixes. You can grab the update yourself by going into 'Marketplace' on your Windows Phone and looking for 'Updates' at the bottom of the home screen.
We all knew that Windows Phone Mango included 'Internet sharing', i.e. Wi-fi tethering, but the functionality hasn't so far been available to handsets which 'updated' to Mango (rather than shipping with it) - and Internet sharing is also dependent on the chipset in your phone. However, there's an update rolling out around the world from HTC for the editorial HD7 and 7 Mozart, I applied it yesterday, screenshot proof below (from the HD7). It seems that tethering is a 'go'.
After celebrating its first anniversary by passing the 35,000 app mark in mid October, the Windows Phone Marketplace has now passed the 40,000 app and games submission mark. Content is being added at the rate of 165 items per day. In the last 30 days, 85% of submissions were apps and 15% were games; 68% were free, 23% were paid and 9% were paid with free trial.
From 8am tomorrow morning (November 16th) the Nokia Lumia 800 goes on sale in the UK and five other European markets (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Netherlands). In the UK, it is available on contract from £26 a month, PAYG for £400 and SIM-free for £469. For the launch of its first Windows Phone device, Nokia has seeded more demo units and trained more retail staff than any other launch in its history. Tomorrow is a big day for the Finnish company.
Three times a year, Ewan Spence heads out for a major tech event. And we do like to kit him out with something fairly cutting edge, to put the smartphone through its paces in a way that might not be possible staying at home. All tinged with Ewan's own unique take on life and expectations. In this, the final (bumper length!) part 4 of a video diary from BlogWorld Expo in Los Angeles, he reports on day four with the Nokia Lumia 800, running Windows Phone Mango, in which he rounds up whether it met his expectations, looking at both hardware and software/apps.
