Martin Brinkmann

Forty-fourth in a series. The overall application growth has improved slightly this week in the US Windows Store. A total of 812 new apps found their way into the store, roughly 150 more than last week's performance.

The important 80,000 apps mark was surpassed this week for the first time. Users now have access to 80,605 apps in the US store. 61,898 of those are free to download and install, while 18,707 are paid applications. The free application count rose by 512 apps this week, the paid app count by exactly 300 new apps.

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Forty-third in a series. The overall application growth has not improved this week at all, making it the third week in a row in which app growth stayed below the 1,000 apps mark.

A total of 633 new apps were published to Windows Store this week, up only 20 apps from last week's weak performance. The total number of apps in the store is closing in on the 80,000 apps mark with 79,793 apps in total available in the US Windows Store.

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Forty-second in a series. If you thought that last week's application growth was bad, you may be even more disappointed this week as it took another dive. Only 613 new apps were published this week, down another 117 apps from last week's weak performance.

The total app count rose to 79,130 apps this week, with 61,062 of them free to install and 18,068 commercial. Free apps grew by 537 apps this week and paid apps by only 76.

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Forty-first in a series.  Microsoft has finally added an option to search for apps in your web browser. Up until now, you had to use the official Store app on Windows 8 for that or a third party service. While there is still no option to browse apps by category or filter by price, it is a step in the right direction. It makes my life a lot easier for example as I can now grab links right from the search interface and do not have to use search engines for that anymore.

Microsoft cannot be happy with the current app growth rate in Windows Store, and this is probably one of the core reasons why it launched the App Builder Rewards program for Windows Phone and Windows 8. It is currently only open for developers in the US though but will provide developers with options to earn points that they can exchange for rewards.

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Fortieth in a series. This week I have both good news and bad news for you. As far as the bad news goes, it was one of the weakest app growth weeks in the history of the Windows 8 operating system. The new application count fell under the 2,000 mark this week, but not only that, it barely made the 1,000 new apps mark.

77,787 apps are listed in the US Windows Store at the time of writing, only 1,019 apps more than last week. The free app count in the store increased by 759 apps to a total of 59,988, while paid apps increased by only 250 to 17,626.

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Thirty-ninth in a series. The total number of new apps in Windows Store still lingers at around the 2,000 mark. While that may not sound that bad on first glance, much of it was fuelled by apps being released to a single store category.

The Music & Video section saw an increase of more than 1,200 apps this week, which means that more than half of this week's new selection have been published to that category.

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Thirty-eight in a series. Last week was rather disappointing in terms of new applications, both volume but also quality wise. While the overall application growth is still lingering at around 2,000 apps per week, the overall quality of apps that launched this week has improved slightly. At the very least, this week got an app of the week while last week did not.

A total of 2,171 apps found their way into the store this week, with the total app count reaching 74,553 in the US store. 57,669 of those are free to download and use, an increase by 1,354 apps. Paid apps jumped to 16,884, an increase of 804 apps this week.

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Thirty-seventh in a series. The app growth has slowed down considerably again in the past two weeks. This week growth made it past the 2,000 new apps mark, but barely with a total of 2,083 new apps. That's almost half the growth we saw two weeks ago in the Windows Store.

The total application count in the US store is 72,382 applications. 56,315 of those apps are free to download and use, while 16,080 are paid apps or desktop applications.

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Thirty-six in a series. Microsoft confirmed this week that the total Windows Store app count crossed the 100,000 apps threshold. That's a big milestone for the company and users of the system.

These 100,000 apps are not available to all users though, as localization limits app availability somewhat. The US Windows Store for instance crossed the 70,000 apps mark this week which in turn means that about 30,000 apps are not available to users from the United States.

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Microsoft released a public preview of the upcoming Windows 8.1 exactly a week ago. The anticipated Windows 8.1 update introduces several changes to the operating system including the ability to boot to Desktop and more efficient Start screen app management.

The first batch of updates was released just two days after the public availability of the preview on June 28. Updates addressed performance issues of the Search charm, SkyDrive video playback, and ironed out two Windows Store kinks in the process.

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Opera Software made a bold move earlier this year when the company announced that it would use WebKit as its rendering engine and V8 as the JavaScript engine for all new products. Later on it revealed that it would follow Google and use the Blink Fork instead of WebKit, but that did not change the explosiveness of the move.

It took the Norwegian company five months to release the first final version of Opera for PCs that is powered by the new engines. While that seems like a long time for users who wanted to find out how the change would affect them personally, the development time is not that long.

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Thirty-fifth in a series.  Microsoft has released the preview of the upcoming Windows 8.1. With it came many changes to the operating system, application management and the store.

Some, like the ability to use smaller or larger tile sizes or the option to uninstall multiple apps at once, have been on the feature request list of many Windows 8 users.

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Thirty-fourth in a series.  The total apps growth this week jumped over the 3,000 new apps mark again after having hit that threshold for the first time two weeks ago.

The total app count in the US Windows 8 Store rose to 63,756 free and paid apps up 3,034 apps from 60,722 the week before.

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Thirty-third in a series. This has been another strong week for Microsoft's Windows Store as apps surged past the 60,000 app mark in the US store for the first time.

A total of  60,722 apps are listed in store at the time of writing, 2,711 more than last week. Free apps have increased by 2,129 to a total of 47,034 apps in the last seven days, while paid apps have seen a moderate growth by 582 apps to 13,688 in total.

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Thirty-second in a series. Windows Store has seen one of the largest growths in its history this week breaking the 3,000 apps mark for the first time this year. A total of 3,033 apps were released, raising the total app count of the US Windows Store to 58,011 apps.

44,905 of those apps are listed as free in the store, an increase of 2,413 apps this week alone. Paid apps increased by 616 apps this week to a total of 13,106.

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