Here is a good interview with my ex-colleague, Joe Belfiore regarding windows major upgrade of Windows Mobile: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2366511,00.asp
Good to hear they are making the development kit free following Android's model. My worry though is that if they don't make the OS free as Google has, they will have an uphill battle with phone hardware companies who have a very high value offer in the form of Android.
For those of you who don't know Joe, he led the development of Media Center for a number of years. Then got lost in Zune land and now has this new role which is the head of the program management team for Windows 7 Phone. The PM team drives product feature set, direction and specs while developers (led by someone else) write code and testers test (again led by someone else).
Joe is very easy going as you can tell in the video and quite smart. That combination tends to be hard to find at Microsoft. You tend to get the latter often without the former. I let you decide where I fared in that when I was there
. So all in all, I would give Microsoft higher odds for success than I would have without him. That said, the odds are extremely against them for success.
Good to hear they are making the development kit free following Android's model. My worry though is that if they don't make the OS free as Google has, they will have an uphill battle with phone hardware companies who have a very high value offer in the form of Android.
For those of you who don't know Joe, he led the development of Media Center for a number of years. Then got lost in Zune land and now has this new role which is the head of the program management team for Windows 7 Phone. The PM team drives product feature set, direction and specs while developers (led by someone else) write code and testers test (again led by someone else).
Joe is very easy going as you can tell in the video and quite smart. That combination tends to be hard to find at Microsoft. You tend to get the latter often without the former. I let you decide where I fared in that when I was there
. So all in all, I would give Microsoft higher odds for success than I would have without him. That said, the odds are extremely against them for success. 
