According to the “Microsoft by the Numbers” page, there are now more than 525,000 apps available for Windows and Windows Phone.

Please take care: not all apps are “universal apps”, so this doesn’t mean that you will find half a million apps if you open the store on your Windows Phone or Windows Phone device.

Even if this number seems to be quite high, there are some reasons why you should still prefer Android or iOS over Windows or Windows Phone if you really depend on apps:

  • Many apps in the Windows or Windows Phone store are still of rather poor Quality

  • According to statista.com, there are a lot more apps available for Android (1,300,000) and iOS (1,200,000) as of July 2014

  • Even if the growth rate Microsoft states is correct (“Hundreds more are added every day”), it seems to be not fast enough to close the “app gap”

  • If there is a new app, it is very likely that it isn’t available for Windows or Windows Phone at first.

If you keep the really poor market share of Windows Phone in mind, it’s no wonder that developers don’t support the platform as well as the other two “big players”.

With the approach towards “universal apps”, this might change because of the much larger market share of Windows, but I don’t expect any major changes of the situation until the launch of Windows 10.

What do you think? Are there enough apps for you or do you miss any important apps? Will the situation change in the future?

Please feel free to comment below.