In just over one year's time since its public unveiling, the Windows Phone Marketplace has allegedly passed the fabled 40,000 apps mark. But that's not a number that's coming straight from Microsoft: The website All About Windows Phone, which uses a customized tracking system to showcase Windows Phone apps and games, is making the claim on this one.

According to All About Windows Phone's Rafe Blandford, it's expected that Microsoft will be able to hit 50,000 apps by mid-January given the current daily app publishing counts. However, these areand could very well besubject to change.

Blandford notes that the average number of apps published daily over the past four weeks is "significantly higher" than the averages from this summer. The marketplace now sits at around 165 new apps being added each day, and additional momentum could help carry Microsoft to the fabled 50,000 app milestone by the end of the year.

The numbers don't lie: Of the 40,189 apps listed at the time of All About Windows Phone's analysis, just around one-fourth, or 10,882, were apps that were added at some point within the past three months. Nearly 12 percent of the marketplace's total apps were added within the past 30 days and, of these, the apps-to-games ratio sits at around 85 percent to 15 percent, respectively. As well, around 68 percent of these apps were free.

But don't fire up your Windows Phone assuming that you'll be able to see all 40,000-plus apps at once.

"In common with other application stores, the total number of published items is not the same as the number of items available to consumers. Of the 40,198 items published to the Marketplace, just over 5,500 are no longer available (removed by Microsoft or withdrawn by the publisher)," Blandford wrote. "In addition, some apps are only available in select markets. This means the number of available items to a consumer, in a given market, is lower than the number of published items."

So how does Microsoft's milestone stack up against the competition? For reference, Apple was able to hit 50,000 apps with its App Store around one month shy of the service's first birthday. The Android Market launched to the public in October of 2008 and reached its 50,000-app milestone in April of 2010  an 18-month journey.

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