The Microsoft Windows Store has 35,971 apps for Windows 8 customers

Windows Store has 35,971 apps

According to MetroStore Scanner the Microsoft Store has 35,971 apps for Windows 8.

That’s 16,000 more apps than the Microsoft Store had at the end of November.

The rate of new apps has accelerated to 415 per day from 362 per day in November.

About 22,000 are available in the United States and the rest are foreign language apps.

Microsoft Windows 8 is an international product.

This pales in comparison with Apple and Android apps but is one metric on how successful Microsoft Windows 8 will be in the short run.

Mobile App

“Apps” is short for Mobile App, the software applications that work on handheld mobile devices, originally the Apple iPhone.

Apps now are an expected part of tablets, smart phones, and computers with the Windows 8 extension of the mobile environment to the desktop and laptop.

Counting apps available in Apple iOS or Google Android is one measure of success of the devices. More apps is assumed to be better, although most of us use considerably less than the 500,000 Apple iPhone apps.

Some apps are single function programs that limit themselves to watching your diet, social media like Facebook and Twitter, or basic photo editing. Apps rarely handle the complex tasks of laptops and desktops since the screens are too small and the handheld devices limited in memory and processing capacity.

As developers become more agile at app development, the tasks they attempt are amazing.

New apps moving to HTML 5

The problem with apps is they are formatted for one screen. Screen size is no longer one-size-fits-all of the iPhone. You can get handheld devices from 3.5 inches beyond 11″ in size. An app for the original iPhone looks wrong on the larger iPhone 5. iPad apps need to be larger or smaller if they are on 5″, 7″, 9″ or 11″ screens.

This leads to huge development costs and delays as apps need updating with every new hardware device. I think apps are a dead end that HTML 5 will fix.

New NJN Network mobile scalable website on Windows 8 Samsung ATIV S

Some apps are re-formatting web pages such as news and social media sites.

In the early days of handheld devices that was essential since web pages were designed for larger screens.

Reading this site or the New York Times on an iPhone was difficult.

Those types of apps will be less and less important as people adopt HTML5 and new JavaScript protocols.

NJN iPhone app (original)

NJN Network had an iPhone/Android app until December 2013. Two weeks ago we converted to a new website that scales itself based on what you are using to view it.

Scalable and agile websites are faster to load and contain almost all the features of the full website, making your choice of computing device irrelevant.

Websites designed to fit all screens also save money for the site owner, reducing development costs.