It’s been a long time since I revisited this topic (several years), but it’s, if anything, more relevant than ever. Just where does Windows 10 Mobile (née Windows Phone) stand in terms of third party applications, compared to the competition? I mean, first party, in-the-box offerings are outstanding, with Outlook, Skype, Maps, Office and much more, but what about the ‘app gap’, as popularly characterised? How bad is it, compared to iOS and Android? I took the current ‘Top 40’ from the application charts from the latter two platforms, as of October 2015 and tried to find equivalents.

Now, I should perhaps point out that I’m talking about ‘applications’ here, not ‘games’. The latter comprising a pretty large chunk of the top charts on other platforms. Plus, each platform breaks down applications into ‘Paid’ and ‘Free’. So, in a bid to try and stay on-topic, what I’ve done below is pick the top applications from both paid and free lists, on both Android and iOS, and hopefully you’ll recognise just about every entry listed below. But can Windows 10 Mobile’s ecosystem provide a match?

Where there’s no match at all, I’ll shade the cell in red, for ease of reading:

That’s not a bad report card for a platform widely perceived to have a yawning ‘app gap’, though before anyone relaxes, I’d add three huge caveats:

• Where there’s not an obvious official application for a service, some of the third party replacements are downright opportunistic, merely existing to scoop up search results and serve ads or worse. Again, there’s a lot more that Microsoft Store QA (if, indeed, they employ anybody – I do wonder sometimes!) could do here.
   
• Although in many cases the third party replacements are very good (e.g. Metrotube for YouTube, 6tin for Tinder), their naming is not obvious. While the Store application correctly throws them up as valid search results for the original service or site, user confidence isn’t going to be very high in terms of them having found what they’re looking for….
   
• A cursory look at ‘top 40’ applications, as here, completely misses a bigger failing for a minority platform like Windows 10 Mobile, i.e. that there’s a ‘long tail’ of lesser used but critical applications that are missing altogether. Archetypal here are banking apps, though also niche utilities and corporate/database stuff – and it usually only takes one “Oh, Windows doesn’t have that!” moment to dismiss the entire platform.

We’re still living with a platform that can suit millions of users then, but a lot depends on what someone needs a Windows 10 Mobile device for. As per the third caveat above, as long as there’s not some critical application that’s missing then there’s a lot recommend about Windows 10 Mobile, in terms of UI and capabilities.

Using the ‘report card’ analogy, I’d go with “Improving, but could do better”. Comments welcome!