Microsoft Announces 50,000 Published Mark For Mobile Applications

Microsoft on Wednesday announced that their Marketplace for mobile smartphones now contains 50,000 published apps, a mark they call an “important milestone”

Statistics were confirmed by All About Windows Phone which pointed to a critical acceleration since the platform launched earlier in the year with apps increasing from 20,000 in August and then jumping from 40,000 to 50,000 in just 40 days.

Breaking down the company’s most successful application categories the site found that entertainment accounts for 57% of the company’s third party mobile apps while “books and reference” fall behind in second place followed by games in third place and “tools and productivity” applications in fourth place.

The study also found that 58% of WP7 apps are free while 29% are paid and 14% offer free trials, numbers similar to those found in the Android Marketplace and iTunes App Store.

Based on current numbers the company is also adding 265 new apps to their catalog each day.

While Microsoft still has a long way to go Newsy pointed out that back in March Microsoft’s Brandon Watson indicated that the company is not padding its stats either.

“We recognize the importance of getting great apps on our platform and not artificially inflating the number of actual apps available to customer by listing ‘wallpapers’ as a category… We also don’t believe in the practice of counting ‘lite’ apps as unique quality content… Finally, we don’t double and triple count apps which are submitted in multiple languages.”

Here’s a full report on the overall application counting process and important milestone set by Microsoft’s mobile division:

[iframe src=”http://www.newsy.com/embed-video/10381/” width=”480? height=”270?]

Have you taken to the new platform at this time or does Microsoft need to offer more applications and other features for you to jump ship over to WP7?