Outside of the technology media, I have seen mainstream media seriously misreport the app situation for Windows Phone 8 and potentially doing Microsoft’s latest mobile OS quite a disservice.
In a nutshell, pretty much any app designed for Windows Phone 7 or 7.5 will work on Windows Phone 8 and with 100,000 apps there is a wide variety from which to choose. However, there are some big name apps that are missing from the Windows Phone platform including the likes of Instagram (like it or hate it) although this is rumoured to be coming soon to WP8. It’s not so much the number of apps but the availability of apps that people really care about, especially games.
Of course, apps designed specifically for Windows Phone 8 will be able to take advantage of the new capabilities of the new platform including multi-core CPUs and NFC just to name a couple. In order for Windows Phone 8 to do its best, native apps need to be available from the get go and in the absence of an SDK that is looking increasingly unlikely making it a challenge for existing apps to be rewritten specifically for it.
Anyway, keep this in mind the next time you come across mainstream (i.e. non-technology) media reports regarding Windows Phone 8 – they can do a terrible job getting details right. In fact, while channel surfing I head Today Tonight refer to the Samsung ATIV S as the “A-T-I-V S” :S
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