Windows Phone 7 Device Requests

Well, there’s an old adage that you should be careful what you ask for because you might just get it.  The avalanche of emails and phone calls looking for developer devices was a welcome development.  There are some out there who think that we might as well pack it in on this whole mobile thing.  Developers, however, know better.  New markets == new opportunities for big ideas to break through.

I personally have seen, erm, a surge in the amount of email I get on a daily basis, thanks in no small part to Long Zheng.  I love that there are so many developers with so many great ideas wanting to get phones, and I particularly love all the electrons being harmed to fill my inbox.  My email is the one that’s out there [brwatson (at) microsoft], but there’s a whole team of evangelists who will be getting the phones to developers.  I’m just acting as a switch, and have been fortunate enough to be something of a public face.  We’re still working on the specific plan details for devices going out next month, but we wanted to lay out some principles for how we are going to actually get phones in developers’ hands, as well as what we are hearing from developers.

First, we are going to prioritize for apps being built by large and small teams, which represent some pretty big ideas, specifically targeting the launch timeframe.  At Mix10 we showed a pretty long list of partners, and we have continued to add to that over the last few months.  Second, as some of you may have heard, we are getting phones to our existing published Windows Phone Marketplace ISVs.  There’s several thousand apps and companies who are part of the 6.x marketplace, and we want to help jump start their transition to Windows Phone 7.  Finally, we are prioritizing for those committed developers who are building apps for Windows Phone 7 and sharing their knowledge about Silverlight, XNA and Windows Phone 7.

Read the rest of this entry »