News · 15 Jun 2010 · MTW Editorial Team
Microsoft’s Brad Watson has shared some more info about the Windows Phone 7 development handsets that the company is going to start shippping to select developers in July:
We are still in the process of putting the final touches to each of our programs which will enable developers to get devices, so the only thing I can ask is to be patient. Orchestrating this sort of thing is quite challenging, but I can say this: we are putting devices in hands starting next month. We will be doing so for a broad range of developers…not just big ISVs. Individual developers with great ideas are just as important. Active folks on this forum are the very people we need to get phones to. People who have figured out to find my corporate email and ping me personally will get forwarded to our platform envangelists, and they will follow up with you directly.
We can’t give a phone to everyone who asks in the immediate time frame. We can’t make 100K developer phones by next month.
I wish we could. We will do our best, but invariably someone is going to be disappointed. I am going to apologize for that ahead of time. Many folks are asking for phones to see what their apps look like. The emulator does a fantastic job of getting you most of the way there. There are things the emulator can’t do, of course, but it’s pretty darn good.
Simply asking for a phone won’t be enough…we are looking for committed developers who can demonstrate that they are building real apps. For us to show up to an event with phones for everyone is great for blog and media coverage, and to hand out a lot of phones, but it doesn’t optimize for developers doing app development. I would rather give a phone to the 2 man team in Italy that has a great idea and is showing progress, but no ability to travel around the world to an event, than to give a phone to someone who had budget from his company to get to an event, but has no intention of building apps for the phone.
The developer phones going out next month, and through the summer, won’t be final build quality – they are meant for testing and readiness for the marketplace opening later this year. Developer purchasable phones (ones you can buy, which are unlocked) probably won’t be available until after launch. The OEMs and mobile operators don’t want final phone designs hitting the market ahead of launch. In the mean time, we have many many thousands of phones which we are looking to get into developers’ hands so that we can harness the collective creativity, passion and desire to be amongst the first to publish apps to the Windows Phone 7 Markteplace.
I wish we could. We will do our best, but invariably someone is going to be disappointed. I am going to apologize for that ahead of time. Many folks are asking for phones to see what their apps look like. The emulator does a fantastic job of getting you most of the way there. There are things the emulator can’t do, of course, but it’s pretty darn good.Source: Microsoft
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