Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Windows Phone: Marketplace passes 40,000 and Amazon may join smartphone race

I tracked and wrote about the quickly growing Windows Phone Marketplace in my WP Wednesday posts for months and will get back in the groove again soon. The great news is that development continues at a great pace with new hardware hitting the streets as there are now over 40,000 apps to choose from. There is also a rumor that Amazon may launch a WP smartphone in late 2012. Mary Jo also mentioned some updates for existing devices and last night I gained WiFi tethering capability on my first generation HTC HD7.

Windows Phone Marketplace

Microsoft launched the new Windows Phone 7 operating system and devices in October 2010 and at the one year anniversary they had about 35,000 apps. I have every app I need on my Windows Phone devices and am really not missing anything I can think of with most apps looking spectacular with the Metro UI. All About Windows Phone estimates that Microsoft could pass the 50,000 mark in January at the rate that apps are hitting the market right now.

Games are always the hot sellers and look to be the top category for Windows Phone too. There are several plots of the data on the AAWP site so check it out if you are interested in the fine details.

Amazon Smartphone?

Amazon just release their first Android-based tablet with the Kindle Fire and now there are rumors that they may be considering the launch of a smartphone. Accoridng to the rumor on Forbes.com a hardware research analyst made the claim so I am not ready to line up for a phone or anything right now. Looking at the Foxconn Technologies manufacturing channels, it seems this device may have a 4 inch display, 8 megapixel camera, and Windows Phone OS with a TI OMAP4 processor.

It seems that Amazon succeeds in large part due to their ecosystem so I don’t really see how they can integrate this into a Windows Phone ecosystem. Right now, Amazon products work well on Android devices where there is no single ecosystem, but then again Microsoft has been fairly open with Windows Phone and allows competing music clients and streaming video services so they may be open to things such as the Amazon MP3 store and more. Do you think there is any merit to this rumor?

minka kelly|nags head nc|ua|dallas cowboys|eric cantor

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