Microsoft shares data on Windows 8 and Windows Phone app activity

In a recent blog post, the Windows team provided some
details about download activity in the Windows Store, and the Windows
Phone Store as part of an effort to drive interest by developers to
build universal apps using Visual Studio.



Not surprisingly, games
are the number one category of apps downloaded from both venues, with
Windows grabbing nearly 40% of the download activity and Windows Phone
taking just shy of 35%.



For Windows Phone, productivity apps
manage a respectable 20%, followed by music, video, other entertainment
and social apps. While games rule the download categories as a whole
for Windows and Windows Phone, the highest levels of incremental
download activity change the landscape a little bit.



Social takes the top area for incremental downloads on Windows, and games
remain at the top for Windows Phone, but social and photos take a close
second, which may help developers identify opportunities with their own
programs.



When it comes to market opportunity, the United States
is the largest identifiable market, but for Windows Phone, the largest
market category is actually “other,” followed by the US, China, and
India. When it comes to language preferences, English is the dominant
language for Windows Phone users, and is about 25% for Windows, followed
by Mandarin.



As for where the money goes with all these apps,
the trend is pointing towards in-app purchases across the board, but
particularly in Windows Phone, outshining paid-app activity by nearly
two-to-one. The main in-app purchase category for Windows and Windows
Phone is what you might expect, games.



Finally, for Windows
Phone, the majority of all downloads, a full two-thirds, are going to
“low memory” devices, meaning 512MB of memory for Windows Phone 8 (256MB
for WP7). Because the activity is so strong on lower memory phones,
Microsoft recommends that apps be optimized for such devices and if that
is not possible, the company recommends actually creating a different
version of the app with lower memory requirements.



What does this
mean to you the user? Well it gives you a look at how developers may
be viewing the world of Windows and Windows Phone from an opportunity
perspective as they write and maintain their apps.

The state of apps with Windows and Windows Phone Fullscreen