BlackBerry World has set its sights squarely at Windows Phone as the BlackBerry app store now has 120,000 apps. Quite a feat, given the short time the BlackBerry 10 OS has been around. At the BlackBerry Live 2013 conference in Orlando, the Canadian company confirmed this, a confirmation that could spell trouble for Windows Phone.

BlackBerry 10 launched in January 2013 with only 70,000 apps in the BlackBerry World app store, and 5 months later, the numbers are very close to the 145,000 apps available in the Windows Phone store, according to CNET. Don't forget, Windows Phone isn't new on the scene, it came out in late 2010 so there should be no excuses. Granted, Windows Phone 8 started from scratch due to switching to the Windows 8 kernel, but that is a hardly a worthwhile excuse.

One important thing to note, BlackBerry World is filled with native Android applications, so if you take away the ports and check the numbers of the real BlackBerry 10 apps, this whole shebang might sing a different tune. Windows Phone store on the other hand, does not incorporate native apps from another platform, so in truth, Microsoft is doing more work to get real apps to its platform, compared to BlackBerry.

At the end of the day, however, both platforms pale in comparison to Android and iOS, which boast over 700,000 apps each. It's a long road ahead for Windows Phone and BlackBerry if these platforms want to catch up with the big boys. More needs to be done to convince developers that they need to show their support with apps and other contents.

Nothing will happen overnight, only hard work and dedication on the side of Microsoft and BlackBerry will see the respective platforms grow to greatness. Still, there's only room for three in this market, and right now, it appears Windows Phone is slowly winning the fight for third place.