It would appear that the days of gauging success within the mobile phone industry by the quantity of handsets sold is long gone as now success seems to be gauged by how many developers develop for your platform and how many apps you offer.

According to an article over on Engadget by Thomas Ricker and by way of Windows Team Blog, Microsoft has now announced that their Windows Phone 7 marketplace will have over 3000 apps and games by the end of the week, not that many really when compared to the likes of other platforms such as Apple and Android and even Nokia but WP7 is still young.

Microsoft is also shouting the odds that they now have 15000 developers which are apparently “signalling their intent to bring exciting content to Windows Phone,” however signalling intent doesn’t mean WP7 will gain 15000 apps overnight.

Having said that, it’s a start but one Microsoft must continue pushing if Windows Phone 7 is to have any chance of competing in the very lucrative mobile app and games arena and they have a long, long way to go before coming anywhere close to rival platforms.