“Time to get serious” about Windows Phone 7

The Beta version of the Windows Phone Developer Tools, first unveiled as a CTP at MIX10, were released today!  So what’s all this mean?  Well, ‘it’s time to get serious,” about building for Windows Phone 7.

With the beta release, the developer tools are close to fully baked, and applications you build with these tools will be nearly ready to publish to the Windows Phone Marketplace when it opens later this year.  Devices are on schedule for delivery for “holiday 2010,” but you don’t want (or need) to wait that long to get started.   With the FREE Developer Tools (including focused versions of Visual Studio 2010 and Expression Blend), an awesome emulator, and development opportunities in both Silverlight and XNA, there’s really no reason not to get a jump on things and have your app be there on the marketplace on Day 1.

Brandon Watson from the Windows Phone team has a great blog post covering the announcement and where Windows Phone is going from here - including opportunities for training, how you can get in line to get one of the upcoming devices, and whom to follow to be sure you stay in the loop on all the developments.  This is an exciting and unchartered platform, so everyone is on equal footing at this point to truly make their mark – it’s time to go out there and do your own epic ‘stuff’!