Windows Phone 7 Clears The Last Big Milestone

This week was an exciting and important milestone for the Windows Phone team – with the completion of our internal development work and extensive testing, our Windows Phone 7 code was released to manufacturing.
 
We are now in the home stretch and over the coming weeks, we’ll continue to work in collaboration with our hardware partners and mobile operators to cross the finish line —  you can expect an exciting range of Windows Phone 7 devices this fall, integrating hardware, software, services and applications.  It has been a monumental effort over the past 18 months – for the first time we brought together a breadth of assets from across the company including Windows, Windows Live, Bing, Zune, Xbox Live, Office, Exchange, SharePoint, SL, .NET, XNA and VS.
 
As Terry Myerson, who led the development effort said in a blog, Windows Phone 7 is the most thoroughly tested mobile platform we have ever released – with more than 12 million hours of testing, and feedback from thousands of independent software developers and early adopters. Windows Phone 7 is not only beautiful, it’s rock-solid.
 
The momentum is really starting to build for Windows Phone 7 – we see the same level of excitement in our partners that we see on the mobile team for what we’re about to bring to customers around the world. We know that we face tough competitors and that we are playing catch-up, but we like our chances. We took a different approach and created a totally fresh mobile experience that connects you to the things you care about most, rather than creating more distance between you and your life. And our approach offers unique opportunities and benefits to phone manufacturers, network operators and developers.
 
The early feedback from reviewers and the media has been very strong:

We can’t wait to share Windows Phone 7 with the world later this fall. We think it will give people a glimpse at just how good their phone can be. And we’re only getting started…

 

Posted by Andy Lees
Senior Vice Presidnet, Mobile Communications Business