It’s been a few days since I posted an update on the growth of the store. Yesterday Mary Jo Foley posted an article with some of my recent stats, and Alex Wilhelm posted a bit more cynical take. Today, fellow EXMSFT, Charlie Kindel posted on his blog about how important it is that the growth of the Windows 8 Store (or any sustainable ecosystem) be organic, not subsidized.

First: I’m happy that there is so much interest in these statistics. I can’t emphasize enough that this is all “seat-of-the-pants” numbers that I believe to be reasonably accurate.

Second: There’s been another second wind of apps appearing. Later this week I hope to write a few posts about the apps themselves, instead of just throwing out app counts for once. In the mean time, let’s just say that the last couple of days have been very kind to Windows 8 users.

According to my calculations today, there are now 2,452 Windows Store apps available globally, with 1,741 of them available in the US.

Back to the “seat-of-the-pants” aspect. As I rewrote some code I discovered a bug in how I was calculating free apps internationally (outside of the US English store). Because of that, the percentage is up. Not dramatically, not fatally, but up. Today the number of free apps is 2,122 globally, meaning ~86% of apps are free. I’m looking to post more granular updates of the US store in particular, and will hopefully start updating the stats around it (including categories) in more detail. In a nutshell, I believe that the percentage of apps that are free outside of the US may be higher than it is inside the US. Further calculations in time may reveal more info here.

Finally, I’m introducing a stat that I believe will be interesting, which is how the ARM app count stacks up to the count of x86 and x64 (which are effectively at parity). By calculating
ARM/average(x86/x64) I have a general percentage of apps that are available for Windows RT but are for Windows 8. Today that percentage is 93%.