Microsoft's fight to bring more apps to its stores appears to be paying off, according to statistics published by the company on the "Microsoft by the Numbers" website.
So far, according to Microsoft, there are 525,000 apps in the Windows Phone Store and Windows Store , and “hundreds of new ones are added every day,” suggesting that its modern platforms are finally gaining traction and more and more developers are discovering the opportunity to find a growing audience.
In October 2012, when Microsoft officially introduced Windows 8, the operating system launched with around 5,000 apps available in the store, a number that was clearly less than the company had hoped for for a modern platform that was supposed to change “the way we work on our computers.”
There are currently nearly 350,000 apps in the Windows Phone Store and about 190,000 apps in the Windows Store, some of which could run on tablets and smartphones and fall into the category of “universal apps,” Microsoft announced.
As VentureBeat, both the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store are well behind the competition. The Google Play Store currently has 1.3 million apps available, while App Store reached the same number in September.
However, there are rumors that Microsoft may merge the two Stores in the next version of Windows, which could happen in the spring of 2015.
Microsoft merged developer accounts for the two stores late last year, which was the first step towards such a major change and paved the way for the universal app concept introduced earlier this year.
