New stats from Microsoft suggest that app developers for the Windows Phone platform should probably give a little more than just cursory head-nod to lower-powered devices. As Microsoft found in its analysis of Windows Store downloads from this past November, 71 percent of all app downloads came from what it describes as "low-memory devices."
A low-memory device, in Microsoft terms, is a Windows Phone 7 device that only has up to 256MB of RAM or a Windows Phone 8 device that only has up to 512MB of RAM. Nokia's Lumia 520—a 512MB Windows Phone 8 smartphone—is currently the most popular Windows Phone device right now, Microsoft notes. Additionally, the top five devices based on Windows Phone Store downloads in November were all low-memory devices; expand to the top ten, and low-memory devices took up seven spots.
"With 71% of downloads now coming from low-memory devices, you can more than double your potential market by optimizing your app to run on low memory devices. If that's not possible, consider creating a version with lower memory requirements to offer alongside your primary apps," suggests Microsoft, in a related blog post.
As before, the most popular category for app downloads from the Windows Store or Windows Phone Store was games. Though the specific rankings for the categories in second through fourth place shifted around since Microsoft's last big update in September, the categories themselves remained the same: Tools & Productivity, Music & Videos, and Social.
Though it's no secret that most of the top-grossing apps in the Windows Store and Windows Phone Store all use in-app downloads for to generate revenue, there doesn't appear to be a benefit for keeping one's in-app costs low.
"While the majority of in-app purchases in the Windows Phone Store are at price points below $2.00, the top 3 highest grossing price points, ordered by total revenue, are $9.99, $4.99, and $19.99. In short, in-app pricing does not have to be low to be profitable," reads Microsoft's blog.
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