I'm very interested to see how well this sells. If WP7 rocks the market, then Google and Apple will have to do incredible things to make even more awesome phones. Sounds exciting!<p>On the other hand, I kind of want it to fail; it takes the mobile world in a direction I don't like. Mobile sites will no longer be able to use HTML5 if they want to support WP7. And I love HTML5. Also, it looks like you can only write managed C# apps that have to be approved in an app store :(
I think they could've made a bigger splash if they'd had some particularly fancy must-have hardware to sell it on - at least one model with something absolutely outstanding about it.<p>As far as I've heard (admittedly I haven't followed it very closely), all the Windows Phone 7 phones [wow, that's awkward] are pretty similar to existing handset hardware, so this just feels mostly like an OS release. An OS that has some interesting features (and a few important things missing, too) and very few apps. And a shitty (at least from a dev standpoint) browser grrrrrrrrr.
I had a chance to demo a couple of Windows 7 phones last week and was impressed at how smooth the navigation and inertia scrolling is. It reminds me of the iPhone experience, but less refined. I think it beats RIM and is very close to Android and WebOS. I think it will sell well if they can give free phones (after contract rebate) because most of the public is looking for the UX over OS potential.
I'd love to try building an app or two for WP7, but I'm not about to pick up another phone contract merely for the privilege. Until MS has an iPod touch-like device (new Zune, perhaps?) it's just not going to happen for me.<p>I wonder what Apple's App ecosystem would like right now if the iPod touch had never existed. I bet it wouldn't be nearly as robust.