Microsoft has added a Windows Phone 7 app gallery to the Bing Visual Search library of structured data sets. Besides offering a convenient and visually pleasing manner in which to browse the Marketplace, the gallery allows the user to filter the full catalog of software — updated daily — by several different criteria, including category, sub-category, and price. This gives us the ability to tease out the fact that out of the 1,658 programs in the market at the time of writing, 483 are free, 753 cost 99 cents, and only 16 are over $10. Unsurprisingly, games are by far the most populated category, with 425 apps, followed by 198 “tools” and 179 entertainment titles.
This Visual Search also keeps updated Top 25 lists of the best rated, newest, and most downloaded apps. Presently Shazam is top-rated, followed by an app called Cocktail Flow, Netflix, Xbox Live Xtras, and kids’ coloring program Color Sprouts. YouTube has been downloaded the most, according to today’s stats, with Xbox LIVE Extras, Facebook, Adobe Reader, and a labyrinth-like game called Unite rounding out the top five. Windows Phone 7 app Visual Search on Bing is currently available for the US and UK Marketplaces.
