Windows Phone was a late entrant in the smartphone industry,years behind the giants like the Apple iOS and the Google Android OS.Both of which had a huge app base with their respective app stores.

With the launch of Windows Phones we saw the launch of Windows Phone Marketplace.If we take a look at the current app scenario in the competitive market iOS stands out with over 550,00 apps securing the first place,then comes Android with over 450,000 apps and within a year and a half of its launch Windows Phone Marketplace has emerged as the third biggest app store with over 80,000 apps now.

As reported earlier by AllAboutWindowsPhone,Windows Phone Marketplace crossed the 80,000 apps mark  yesterday,with the rate of 340 apps per day.Currently there are 82,234  published apps with almost 30,000 of them were being added in the last quarter(Q1 2012).The number of developers have now passed the 20,000 mark.

The category wise app division is as shown above,the Entertainment section leads with 19%  of the apps,second to follow is the Tools+productivity apps with 14 % and Games category finishing third with 13 % of the total number of apps in the marketplace.

Image Credits[AllAboutWindowsPhone]

The Free apps percentage for the marketplace has grown from 65% to 67% since February.The number of paid apps stands at 22 % of the total apps while number of paid apps with Trial stands at 10%.

So by the launch of Windows Phone 8 AKA Apollo update the next major update after Mango we can expect a huge app base of over 150,000 apps with this rate,which would be a huge boost for all those new buyers who are going to buy the Windows Phone 8 based devices.