Microsoft Pursues WebOS Devs, Offers Free Phones 209
CWmike writes "Taking advantage of Hewlett-Packard's departure from the tablet and smartphone market, Microsoft has offered webOS developers free phones, tools and training to create apps for Windows Phone 7. Brandon Watson, Microsoft's senior director of Windows Phone 7 development, made the offer on Twitter on Friday, and has been fielding queries ever since. 'To Any Published WebOS Devs: We'll give you what you need to be successful on #WindowsPhone, incl. free phones, dev tools, and training, etc.,' Watson said a day after HP's announcement. Before Friday was out, Watson said he had received more than 500 emails from interested developers, and later, that the count was closing in on 600."
Microsoft is really well positioned here (Score:1, Interesting)
This was a really smart move.
But beyond that, Microsoft is poised to take serious advantage of the current situation:
1) WebOS users would probably desire a very well designed system, and apart from iOS the only system with strong design behind it is WP7.
2) With Google buying a hardware company, Microsoft is well positioned to say "WP7 is the only OS you can use where the OS designer is not competing with you".
3) Nokia WP7 phones starting to come online soon.
There's a very real possibility WP7 could start cutting in to Android marketshare before too long...
Re:Microsoft is really well positioned here (Score:4, Interesting)
This must mean you're the one person in 18 million who actually thinks Microsoft is going to make any significant penetration in the mobile market.