Browse Windows Phone Apps Without Zune Desktop
As much as I dislike comparing app store counts between different smartphone platforms, I cannot deny that the growth of a new platform’s app store is an indication of developer support for the platform and that the larger the number of apps the higher likelihood that the app you want is available. Problem is, counts alone don’t provide the answer to the question of whether the platform has the app you need, for that you need access to the app store’s catalog.
For those interested in checking out what apps are available for Windows Phone 7 you can browse the catalog using Bing Visual Search, which you can go to directly by clicking this link. You will notice that there are currently 1,658 apps in the Windows Phone store. One flaw in the approach Microsoft is taking is that there isn’t a way to search for apps within the store via Bing. For example there is no way that I can tell to search for the Twitter apps that are in the Windows Phone app store. Despite the inability to search for apps, the Bing visual search solution provides a nice way to browse through the apps that are available and see which are the most popular and most downloaded apps.
