Windows Phone Marketplace hits the 100K app milestone

In just 20 months, more than 100,000 apps have been published to the Windows Phone Marketplace. That means 313 apps per day, according to the blog All About Windows Phone.

Not bad for an apps store playing catch up with Apple's iTunes and Google's Play. According to All About Windows Phone, Microsoft's mobile-app marketplace hit the 100,000 benchmark faster than Android, which took 24 months, but slower than iOS, which hit the mark in 16 months.

Last July Microsoft's store reached 25,000 apps and by December it had 50,000 apps, making it a total of 14 months to get to that point. But in just five more months, December til now, the figure doubled. According to All About Windows Phone, more than 26,000 apps were added in the last three months and more than 9,000 were added in the last month. These apps come from roughly 24,000 different publishers.

Although 100,000 apps have been published, not all of them are currently live. Some have already been phased out, while others are in staging. The actual live figure is 88,371 apps. Also, not all apps are available around the world. So far, 60 countries carry Windows Phone Marketplace and it varies from place to place which apps are available. For example, 77,450 are available in the U.S. -- which has the most -- while Saudi Arabia has the least with fewer than 20,000.

Dozens of types of apps are available, from business to photo to sports, but by far the biggest category is entertainment with nearly 20,000 apps. Other popular categories include tools + productivity, books + reference, and games. According to All About Windows Phone, these four categories make up 59 percent of all content that the marketplace carries. Additionally, 67 percent of the apps are free.

Still, as apps stores go, Apple's iTunes and Google's Play continue to reign with around five times as many available apps as Microsoft's store.