Windows Phone 7 : A New Click by Microsoft for Mobiles

New Mobile OS by MS:

As per Dan Costa, Windows Phone 7 made an auspicious debut this week in New York. Microsoft showed off handsets from Samsung, HTC, LG, and even Dell. The platform looks good, with an interface designed from the group up for mobile use. There is no Windows Mobile-like start menu on these phones, just big virtual buttons that you tap with your fingers. It looks like a platform that could go head to head with the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry, or Android. I just have one question: Where are the apps?
It is harder than you think to count how many apps are available for each mobile platform. It seems safe to say the iPhone has about 250,000, Android about 90,000, and they are both adding apps every day. The Palm Pre's WebOS, by comparison, just passed 5,000 apps. A fact that might very well drive me into the Android universe. The Windows Phone 7 devices haven't shipped yet, but a visit to its Web site is not encouraging.

I could only find seven applications listed on the site Twitter, eBay, IMDb, and four games. The integration with Xbox live is a key selling point and there is no reason why Microsoft shouldn't be positioning Windows Phone 7 as a gaming platform, Apple has sure done that with the iPhone and iPod touch. But where are the productivity apps? Where is Netflix? Surely Slacker and Pandora will be coming on board—they port to everything. In fact, the Windows Phone 7 App catalog has generated the most buzz because of what it is lacking; Angry Birds developers got their feathers ruffled when Microsoft mistakenly used their logo in on its site. Is this it?

Part of this app shortage may be by design. Windows Phone 7 has remarkably rich native functionality. The Zune-based music player looks more polished than the native players on Android or the BlackBerry. Likewise, the Office integration of contacts and email is very slick. Out of the box, Windows Phone 7 is a robust mobile computing experience. So much so, Microsoft might be tempted to think it doesn't need third party developers. That would be a huge mistake.

For better or worse, mobile platforms are now judged by their app catalog. People don't look at their phones as isolated devices anymore, they look at them like mobile computers. No one would want to buy a computer if it only ran pre-installed software. (Unless it is a Mac, curiously people seem to do just fine with those.) Microsoft has traditionally been very good at cultivating developer relationships, those are what relationships kept Windows Mobile running on fumes until Phone 7 could be finished. Microsoft needs those developer back.

There is reason to be optimistic. Developing for the WP7 should be easier than, say, developing for the Blackberry. Apps can be created using Silverlight, XNA Game Studio, and a mobile version of Visual Studio. But Microsoft needs some big names to sign on and not just game developers. Otherwise, it will wind up with a beautiful, well-regarded mobile operating system that no one uses.

And if Microsoft wanted that, they could have just bought Palm.

Compiled by : Sameer Sharma