I don't think I'd describe this as "making the leap" - I have a published TouchPad app, and I was curious about the upcoming Mango/WP7.5, so I emailed about the WebOS->Windows offer - basically, I got an email back with a list of resources to explore to build a Windows Phone app. Not sure what the followup is going to be.<p>There's nothing really free about it - my dev environment is OS X, so I'd have to get a copy of Windows 7 ($100 from Amazon), install it in Parallels for the Mac ($60), join Microsoft's AppHub ($99/year), all to get (maybe) a free WP7 phone.<p>Also, from what I can tell, there's zero overlap between WebOS and Windows Phone 7 development, so all these WebOS devs would be starting from scratch.<p>Frankly, I'm kind of surprised that Google's Android dev relations team didn't make a similar offer.
"leap"? I think us webOS devs just wanted free hardware to expand our apps beyond webOS, but many still remain (especially in light of all the people with webOS devices over the weekend).
Wonder how many will be on WP7 in 6 months?
I wonder what contract (if any) was required?<p>Still, if I were a WebOS dev (focused on phone not tablet stuff), and someone offered me free hardware, I'd jump.
WebOS was fun to develop for (HTML and JavaScript!), but had only 1% of the market. WP7 looks more like the two market leaders (as in "less fun") but has about 3% of the market. Looks like an improvement.<p>I'd say it's worth a try, but, so far, Microsoft hasn't made contact.<p>If you already have iOS and Android covered, WP7 is worth a shot, but I wouldn't ignore RIM as a viable third player - their phones appear to be making inroads into the low-end and that segment is huge.