The Windows Store, which offers Metro-style apps for Windows 8 and Windows RT, now has 35,000 apps. That figure is unofficial and comes from a tracking web site, not from Microsoft.
MetroStore Scanner claims that the Windows Store now offers 35,909 apps, with 300 to 500 new apps hitting the store each day this week. New app publishing was actually quite a bit stronger in the weeks leading up to Christmas, however. The week of December 10, for example, 700 apps or more were added most days. Over 14,000 new apps were added in the past month.
Alex Wilhelm reports in The Next Web that the store had 10,000 apps on October 30, 13,000 on November 6, 16,000 on November 14, and 20,000 on November 22. So it appears that new app availability has been basically consistent for the first two months.
Some other interesting data is available on the MetroStore Scanner site. The most popular app category is education, with 5560 apps, followed by entertainment (5386), books & reference (4276), games (3684) and tools (3386). And availability of Metro apps that run on ARM (35,645) doesn’t fall below that for x64 (37,100) and x86 (37,028). (And no, I’m not sure why those latter figures are higher than the total app count.)
Of course, you can’t mention app numbers without getting into a discussion about app quality. As with the Windows Phone Marketplace (now the Windows Phone Store) before it, the Windows Store is clearly adding apps at a very fast rate, but the overall quality of those apps is likewise questionable. There’s some good stuff in both, of course, but you really have to look for it.
Still, progress is progress.