Analysts and commentators might focus on pure sales figures, but the health of any platform can be measured by the number of apps its marketplace boasts.

That's the mantra Microsoft is currently shouting about, with the company using its Windows Phone developer blog to detail stats a year after it first showed the platform during the MIX10 conference.

Upping the apps

The most notable number is the 11,500 apps Microsoft claims are now on sale on Windows Phone Marketplace – up from the 10,000 milestone the app store reportedly passed on March 14.

Averaged out, that means around 94 new apps a day are hitting Windows Phone Marketplace.

At that rate, Windows Phone 7 owners will be able to access 20,000 apps by the middle of July.

Large portions of the new apps, of course, come from the hands of fresh studios being drawn to the platform – an area in which Microsoft believes it is doing particularly.

Digging developers

"People are talking a lot about the number of developers in their ecosystem," said Microsoft's Brandon Watson on the blog.

"It would be easy for us to say that we had 1.5 million given the developer tools downloaded, or we could talk about the number of people we have on mailing lists, but we won't."

"We'd rather give a nod to the 36,000 members of the AppHub community who have voted with their wallets and become members of the Windows Phone developer community."

Of the apps on sale, Microsoft claims 7,500 are paid apps, with 1,100 funded by adverts.

On average, the company's stats suggest each Windows Phone 7 owner downloads an average of 12 apps each – a figure Watson claims represents "very healthy demand" given the platform only launched in October.

[source: Microsoft]