New U.S.data from app store analytics firm Distimo suggests Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7is still a long way away from making an impact in the enterprise market.
The report, which compared the popularity of different appcategories between the company’s new Windows Phone 7 Marketplace and itsprevious Windows Marketplace for Mobile,found that games and entertainment apps experienced the biggest jump indownloads on the new Phone 7 platform versus the Windows Mobile 6-based OS.
Games apps increased from 34 per cent on the Windows Mobile6 store to 40 per cent on the new app store, while entertainment apps rose fromabout seven per cent on the previous platform to about 12 per cent on Phone 7.
But perhaps more telling is the hit that business relevant apps took inpopularity on the new app store. Productivity apps dropped from just over fiveper cent down to less than three per cent, with communication, search, andtools apps all seeing a decrease in popularity.
Distimo also found that all ten of the most popular paidapps in the Phone 7 store belonged to the games category.
This data clearly shows that Microsoft’s developers arefocused on one thing: getting consumers back on-board with its mobilityproduct.
Related Microsoft news also popped up on Wednesday, when thecompany not only announced that it would have 3,000 apps available on its storeby the end of the week, but also said it has increased its developer pool yetagain and now has more than 15,000 developers committed to bringing content tothe Phone 7 Marketplace.
While both these figures represent a huge increase insupport for Phone 7 compared with Windows Mobile 6, this won’t mean much forenterprises unless these developers start going beyond games and buildingattractive tools for business users.
And despite the army of developers, the Distimo report foundthat six of the ten most popular apps in the Phone 7 Marketplace are published byMicrosoft itself.
Everybody expected Microsoft’s new mobile platform to facean uphill battle in the consumer market, but I think many industry observersfelt it was a given that Microsoft would at keep its standing as the secondbiggest mobile OS in the enterprise.
Focusing too much on the games market, especially with thebig tie-in to Xbox Live, I see Microsoft actually losing even more share toApple’s iPhone and Google Android-based devices in the enterprise.
Even though both those platforms have built their followingthrough the consumer market, the Apple and Google app stores also have hundredsof thousands of apps that cater to all users.
Microsoft needs to concentrate less on how many developersthey have and more on what they need those developers to do.
