One month ago today, I began analyzing the Windows Store. It was a dark time, when we didn’t know the difference between a Metro app, modern app, and a Windows Store app. When I first calculated the number of Windows Store apps on August 16th, it was 530 applications.

Times have changed – with the clarified naming, I think I finally get what those terms all mean. Well at least the last two. The first one means you’re likely to get your hand slapped by somebody. 🙂 Oh, and there are now 1749 applications, globally, on the Windows Store as of today (September 16th, 2012).

So for exactly one month, I’ve been parsing Microsoft’s Windows Store, attempting to get an idea of what’s there, what’s not, how it was evolving, and what kind of patterns in general I could find. The statistics I provide are calculated by me, using publicly available information that I have gleaned from Microsoft. They have not provided the statistics, or the information, to me directly. The numbers provided are not official, and not necessarily blessed or approved by Microsoft.

I’ve posted a few of these stats on my Twitter account, @getwired, and dumped a fair amount of the statistics into a “State of the Store” article at Directions on Microsoft, where I work.

But this level of detail, and this granularity, is a different type of information, and much more consumer focused, than Directions on Microsoft usually handles, and not something every single one of my Twitter followers may care about. As a result, I’ll likely be writing up summary articles here, and using @WinAppUpdate to post updates when interesting statistics, or posts on this site, are available.

Drop me a line at either Twitter account, or in the comments here, to let me know what you think, or what statistics you care most about. I don’t plan to issue any extensive reviews of apps, but I do know where you can go for those if you want.

A few things to bear in mind. I asked on Twitter earlier today for people to tell me what statistics they wanted to see. While I can share a few of those mentioned, some, such as actual sales numbers or most popular apps are simply things I wouldn’t be able to get anytime soon, since Microsoft does not share those in any public manner today, provides no API to retrieve them, and would be unlikely to share with me.

I look forward to helping you discover whatever I can about the Windows Store!