Windows Phone 7 Launch

This morning was the official launch of the new Windows Phone 7 mobile phones.  Microsoft have been talking about this new mobile OS for just over a year now, and promised that the phones would be available in time for the Holiday buying season.  Today we heard that the official date will be November 8th in North America.

When Apple launched the iPhone, it was only available initially in the US on AT&T.  As usual Canada got the short end of the stick – Rogers didn’t get the iPhone for about a year.  I had just extended my contract so I was not able to get a subsidized phone.

That contract is now coming to an end, and so I am thankful that I will have the choice of 3 significant mobile phone platforms to choose from for my next phone – the Apple iOS 4, Google’s Android and now the Microsoft Windows Phone 7.

I have an iPod Touch and so I am familiar with the Apple OS.  Its mature and there are a lot of Apps for it (although it is sometimes hard to find the good ones), but one of the advantages of both the Google Android OS and the MS Windows Phone 7 OS is that the OS is available in many different form factors from many different phone hardware vendors.

Also as a .NET developer I like the idea that I can develop Applications for the Windows Phone 7 phones due to the underlying .NET Framework used for Application Development on the phone.

So over the next few weeks I will be checking out the new phones, and trying to decide what will be my phone for the next 2-3 years.