Looks like MS is serious about getting developers on the Windows Phone 7!
Brandon Watson, Senior Director of Windows Phone 7 development at Microsoft, put out the following tweet which really goes a long way to reach out to WebOS developers:
What does this mean for Windows Phone 7? In less than one year WP7 has over 30,000 apps, which is a very good rate. There aren’t exactly a plethora of WebOS developers out there, but once again Brandon Watson is showing generosity to aspiring WP7 developers.
As you may know, HP recently stated that they are not going to make any more WebOS devices, such as tablets or another Pre, but will instead license out WebOS to third party manufacturers.
But are any manufacturers going to step up and take on a whole new platform that has had trouble selling since its outset? Especially since they will be competing against Android, iOS, and Windows Phone 7. This is a good time for WebOS developers to find a new platform to develop for, and Brandon Watson is sure making it easy to jump on the WP7 band-wagon.
Brandon is known to be very developer friendly. He invited developers to get in touch with him on anything and ask questions via Twitter, email, and even his personal cell phone number on Twitter.
For a corporation of this magnitude, that is really something.
As the war of the “Big 3” continues in the mobile world, MS looks to be taking big leaps with Mango RTM coming right around the corner, new devices on the horizon, more apps and developers every week, and very good customer satisfaction. MS knew this was going to be a battle, and that steering people away from established operating systems was not going to be easy, but in almost one year they seem to have really made some headway.
MS also recently The released a WP7 API mapping tool to make it easier for iPhone developers to port their applications across. Jean-Christophe Cimetiere of MS stated of the tool:
“iPhone developers can grab their apps, pick out the iOS API calls, and quickly look up the equivalent classes, methods and notification events in WP7,”… “A developer can search a given iOS API call and find the equivalent WP7 along with C# sample codes and API documentations for both platforms.”
How excited are you about Windows Phone 7?
UPDATE: Brandon Watson tweets he’s received almost 1000 emails already from interested WebOS developers!
