The problem with a popular Marketplace: boring, redundant apps

Not everyone is happy with the Windows Phone Marketplace. Someone at Reddit (hello 'rage comics', my favorite other time killer) is lamenting the overabundance of "non apps" in the Marketplace Tools section. As noted in the image, there seems to be quite a bit of...the same thing? Echoing similar statements, writer for ZDnet, Noikia Experts and friend of the site Matt Miller noted last night in a tweet: "Appears to be maybe 50 decent apps and 950+ crap ones in WP7 Marketplace. Numbers aren't everything, let's pick up the quality please."

Question: even if Microsoft wanted to prevent this from happening, how would they go about doing it? Set a five "Tip calculator" rule? (And seriously, who actually uses a tip calculator?) Do you think the Windows Phone Market, despite promises, will become like Android's and Apple's with the majority of apps subpar? Or is this just the 1st wave of a new OS that will up the ante?

Fire away in comments!

Source: Reddit, Twitter (@palmsolo)

Daniel Rubino
Editor-in-chief

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central. He is also the head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been covering Microsoft since 2007, when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, laptops, next-gen computing, and watches. He has been reviewing laptops since 2015 and is particularly fond of 2-in-1 convertibles, ARM processors, new form factors, and thin-and-light PCs. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics, watched people sleep (for medical purposes!), and ran the projectors at movie theaters because it was fun.