Microsoft spent years trying to get Windows users to use new, modern apps. But that experiment failed. According to MS Poweruser, the number of apps in the Windows Store fell extremely sharply between 2014 and 2016.
The figures come from Microsoft documents that were part of a court case with dismissed flex workers. The flexworkers were app-testers. They revealed a huge drop in the number of apps in the two years.
“The number of apps in the Windows Store dropped to 13 percent of the 1.1 million apps offered in 2014. That’s why fewer Lionbridge bug tests were needed,” says the document. Lionbridge is what the app-testers worked for. According to these figures, only 143,000 apps will be available in the store by 2016.
However, there were never a million apps available in the store. Chances are that Microsoft refers to adding apps and updates.
Microsoft initially offered developers money to create apps. As a result, an enormous number of spam apps were added. Between 2014 and 2016, Microsoft announced the end of the Windows Phone. In 2017 the support of Windows Phone 8.1 was discontinued, so the platform really came to an end. At that time, Windows Phone was hardly ever used either. At that time, 99.7 percent of all smartphones had Android or iOS installed.
Windows Phone
However, Windows Phone was the only app platform that depended on the store. After the shift from Windows 8 to Windows 10, Microsoft also placed less emphasis on modern apps and tablet mode in Windows. So there is a good chance that the number of apps has decreased even further since then.
It is not known how many apps are currently available in the store. Microsoft no longer publishes these figures.
This news article was automatically translated from Dutch to give Techzine.eu a head start. All news articles after September 1, 2019 are written in native English and NOT translated. All our background stories are written in native English as well. For more information read our launch article.
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