At the MIX10 conference, Microsoft released its platform and free tools to app developers and told them to get started.  A year later, Windows Phone 7 Director Brandon Watson seems quite excited about some statistics detailed at the Windows Developer Blog.

When considering the various measures of progress over the last year, we tend to focus on the third party developers who have built so many amazing apps and games for the platform. Given the one year anniversary of the tool set, I also want to acknowledge the engineering work that began long before any of us knew what the Windows Phone developer platform would be…Instead of talking about those points one-by-one, we thought it would be more fun to take a look at some of the numbers that illustrate our commitment to those principles over the course of our first year

Okay, let’s hear the numbers:

• The Windows Phone 7 Developer Tools have been downloaded over 1.5 millions times
• AppHub, the Windows Phone official developers community has amassed 36,000 paid members.  They are currently added 1,200 members to that list weekly
• 11,500 unique apps have been generated.  According to Watson, this is a true un-fluffed up number.  This figure does not include competitor’s apps, as he states they aren’t interested in accumulating “tonnage.”  This figure does not include “Lite” versions of apps.  The figure also does not count apps in different languages as separate apps.
• Watson reports that the Windows Phone offers 7,500 paid apps.  He boasts that although they cannot compete with other companies in terms of handset volume, some app developers have told him that they are able to generate more revenue on the Windows Phone platform.
• Windows Phone users on average download 12 apps per month.
• The average time between app submission and certification is 1.8 days.  Watson says that this is much to the delight of developers, who hate to have their apps sit in limbo.
• In a testament to the thorough instruction given to developers, 62% of apps pass certification on the first try.
• 44% of all paid apps offer a trial version
• Out of the entire list of registered developers, only 40% have produced an app.  Watson is particularly giddy about this stat because it shows they may in fact have up to 60% left to come.

It looks like they believe things are on the up swing over at Microsoft.  They aren’t the only ones who think it might be a good couple of years for the Windows Phone.  Recent projections put the phone squarely in 2nd place of market share, behind the Android OS in 2015.