Microsoft Releases Final Windows Phone 7 Dev Tools 170
cgriffin21 writes "Microsoft on Thursday released the final Windows Phone 7 developer tools to manufacturing, giving coders a couple of weeks' lead time to get their apps ready for the launch of the Windows Phone Marketplace in early October. Microsoft released the Windows Phone 7 OS to manufacturing on Sept. 1, and its OEM partners are in the process of testing it on handsets. The Windows Phone 7 developer tools are the final piece of the puzzle for Microsoft, which is now ready to march back into a mobile market where it has fallen alarmingly behind the leaders."
In related news, CNET reports that Windows Phone 7 will only be available for GSM networks at launch, with a CDMA version planned for the first half of next year. This rules out Sprint and Verizon for launch.
Android, iOS, Blackberry OS, Windows Phone 7? (Score:5, Interesting)
WHO WILL WIN?! Actually it's kind of too late for Microsoft already. They're entering the market so late, what can they possibly offer consumers (I'm ignoring business use cases here, since it isn't for business anyways, or so they stated) that they can't already get from current offerings, and better?
Furthermore, and this really pisses me off, the phone can't even run Silverlight in the browser. I have made a large Silverlight app and to make it work on the phone I have to re-target it, then tweak it to work with the "non-mobile but also not normal Silverlight version on windows phone 7" which is stupid. And I can't even tell people to just browse to the "regular" Silverlight page because of course, that won't work either. What exactly are they doing here?
Re:Honest (Score:2, Interesting)
Competition is good, but honestly, I don't want competition from Microsoft. I WANT them to fail (and thankfully the market so far has obliged). Their stranglehold on the desktop OS market is a tough egg to crack. It's a position that isn't even held via merit anymore - it's just kinda the default choice because that's what almost everyone runs so support and software are all made for it.
Microsoft failing in the mobile market hurts their bottom line, but more importantly it harms their company image even further. The more incompetent they look, the more likely people are to try out something else on their DESKTOP too. Not to mention that one extreme benefit of the mobile OS wars and the increase in people browsing from phones is that web developers have HAD to start thinking mutli-platform. The days when you could just develop for IE6 because that's what everyone used are long gone, and the myriad of non-MS OS's in use on mobile phones played a sizable role in that. I don't want MS to have a foothold in that area.
Let some new players fight in the mobile OS market.
Surprised they aren't taking it more seriously (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Android, iOS, Blackberry OS, Windows Phone 7? (Score:1, Interesting)
It worked for the original xbox
Re:Android, iOS, Blackberry OS, Windows Phone 7? (Score:3, Interesting)
>>>Better for them to lose money now, even lots of it, than for a free market (or a competitor) to win.
That strategy isn't working for them in the Xbox market. First they sold the Xbox for about half its actual cost of build. Now they are losing 10-20 dollars per 360 sold, but Microsoft is still being outsold 4-to-1 by the current winner. I know MS has deep pockets but how long can they continue this strategy? 10 years max? 15?
Microsoft is just like any other business and cannot afford to lose money on cellphones or any other product. Eventually their treasury will run dry.
Re:Android, iOS, Blackberry OS, Windows Phone 7? (Score:4, Interesting)
The $50,000 question: What can Windows Phone 7 come up with that nobody else has, and make people willing to be locked via contract to two years with the device?
Before Windows Phone 7, WM was a great and extremely secure OS, next to BlackberryOS. It supported remote kills, encrypted the memory card in a simple, but elegant and secure fashion, allowed one to reset their password if forgotten on the road, supported a lot of applications (when Handango was the main way to purchase mobile programs), was easy to program for, and so on.
It is understandable that Microsoft wants to go from an open courtyard to a walled garden, especially with all the brickbats they have taken over the years (deserved and undeserved [1].)
As of now, we have a number of distinct platforms for writing smartphone apps, and each is different from each other by a large degree: We have Objective C for iOS, Java for Android/BlackberryOS, XNA or Silverlight for Windows Phone 7, and C++ for Symbian (IIRC). XBox coders will be fine with XNA for the platform, but iOS and Android app writers will not bother because it is a completely different platform and architecture.
Developers are looking at the numbers right now and growth rates. If I were to place my bets on a business application, it would be the tried and true BlackberryOS. If I wanted business users and consumers, it would be iOS. If I wanted consumers and some small business, Android. Where does Microsoft fit in here?
There is one niche I see Windows Phone 7 will be good for is Exchange support. I'm sure it will support encryption, remote kill, password changes, password complexity, and all that. However, is superb Exchange support good enough to get the phone into the enterprise, jostling out Blackberries and iPhones [2]? IMHO, it needs more than that to be a viable platform.
Microsoft makes some high quality products, but that isn't good enough. They have to grab market from entrenched companies and fight with Android for customers, both business and end user. I can see MS gunning at RIM for the enterprise users, but they have a fight on their hands for other markets.
[1]: A lot of Windows problems are not Microsoft's fault. They are due to application developers who do the absolute minimum to get code shipped with security as a distant afterthought. I'm sure there would be a lot fewer cases of compromised Windows PCs if application developers wrote their code to not crash if DEP was turned on globally, and allowed ASLR to function.
[2]: Apple is getting better with encryption, especially for Exchange. The only thing the iPhone is missing is the ability to set it so it erases itself if it does not get a network signal after "X" amount of time like Blackberries do. Similar with functionality to erase itself if the SIM card is removed or changed out.
Re:Microsoft and Incompetence? A tale of two smart (Score:3, Interesting)
probably more important is the bit that said the phone manufacturers can't customise it.
So, can you imagine Samsung and HTC putting in vast amounts of effort to design, manufacture and market a phone that.. to all intents and purposes, is the same as the other one. Including the LG phone they cranked out cheaply and gets all the sales because of that.
At the moment, all my colleagues are excited by Android phones, everyone who had a HTC hero wants a HTC Desire, and now they're salivating at the Galaxy S. These are different phones, slightly differnet features, and that makes for happy manufacturers who suddenly release something and make vast amounts of cash - enough to pay for the next bigger, better model.
With Window Phone... why bother, unless you're the cheapest no-one will care for your phone. If it has an extra megapixel on the camera, you're just losing money compared to your competitor who sells thousdands more than you because they priced it $20 cheaper .. for exactly the same functionality.