This past week, Microsoft has had its fair share of both good news and bad news. The good news is that their tablets – mainly, the 128 GB Surface Pro – are selling like hotcakes. The bad news is that web app developers have essentially stopped developing for the emerging platform. PCWorld takes a deeper look at decline:
Yep, the Windows Store’s growth has slowed to a near-standstill. That’s a catastrophe for a platform that started out lagging far behind the competition.
Worse, the pace of new submissions has only slowed since Windows 8’s launch. Despite early qualms about the state of the Windows Store, Microsoft’s bold new operating system actually proceeded to grow at a fairly brisk pace once it hit the streets. Developers hit the ground running, pumping nearly 500 apps into the market each and every day, pushing the global total to 20,000 apps in less than a month.
The next 15,000 came at a slightly reduced speed, but it was nothing to worry about. When the Windows Store hit the 35,000 mark on December 27, the finger-friendly apps were flying in at a still-brisk rate of 415 per day, according to The Next Web.
Then the holidays were done, and so was the Windows Store’s rapid growth.
It took until January 28—more than a month—for Microsoft’s app market to add a mere 5,000 apps and crack the 40,000 app barrier. Some quick off-the-cuff math shows this equals roughly 156 apps per day, or only a third as many apps as were being added per day during the Windows Stores debut month.