Phone 7 Released to Manufacturing

Windows Phone 7, Microsoft’s latest mobile platform for consumer smartphones, reached a critical milestone with the release to manufacturing (RTM) of the final code on Sept. 1, 2010. Manufacturers can now begin to integrate the Windows Phone 7 software with their hardware, and phones running Windows 7 should be available before the end of the year. Developers are showing some interest in the platform, which is critical given the large number of applications available for competing platforms, such as Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. Although not every developer who downloads the developer tools will create an application, Microsoft says the developer tools beta, released in July, had been downloaded more than 300,000 times. The final tools will be available on Sept. 16.

For a description of Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 strategy, see “Windows Phone 7 Series Resets Mobile Strategy” on page 3 of the Apr. 2010 Update.

The business features of Windows Phone 7 are described in “Windows Phone 7 to Support Business Features” on page 8 of the Aug. 2010 Update.