Microsoft has revealed some interesting developer- and user figures around its smartphone operating system (OS), Windows Phone 7, a year after the company first provided a preview of the OS during its MIX10 conference. 

 

Since then, the company has launched its smartphone OS (as well as a local developer portal), with developers from around the globe downloading the Windows Phone Developer Tools (used to create applications for this OS) more than 1.5 million times.

 

Around 36 000 developers have registered with the Redmond-based company, with a total of 11 500 apps available for users for download. Users on average have been downloading approx. 12 apps per month. This number of available applications pales in comparison to the 350 000+ apps that is available in Apple’s iOS App Store, but for Microsoft believe in quality over quantity.   

 

“We recognize the importance of getting great apps on our platform and not artificially inflating the number of actual apps available to customer by listing 'wallpapers' as a category, or perhaps allowing competitor’s apps to run on the platform [like RIM’s BlackBerry Tablet OS is able to do with Android apps] to increase 'tonnage',” stated Brandon Watson, director for Windows Phone 7, in a blogpost on the Windows Phone developer blog.

 

All of these figures will more than likely be significantly boosted after Nokia starts releasing its Windows Phone OS-operating offspring, following the Espoo and Redmond smartphone OS nuptials.

 

According to the research firm International Data Corporation’s (IDC’s) Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, the move by Nokia to adopt Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS as its primary smartphone operating system, will result in Windows Phone becoming the number 2 smartphone OS worldwide behind Android by 2015.