Windows Phone 7 - Released To Manufacturing
Today is the day that the Windows Phone team has been driving towards, and we're very excited to say that we've reached the biggest milestone for our internal team - the release to manufacturing (RTM) of Windows Phone 7!
Context & Ripple Effects
This RTM closes out an unusually disciplined year of milestone-driven releases at Microsoft — Windows 7 hit manufacturing in July 2009 and Office 2010 followed in April 2010 — with the phone team now hitting the same internal gate. The February leak of early Windows Phone 7 details set expectations for what the platform would look like, and TechFlash's same-day pickup flags extra Facebook integration as one of the features locked into the shipping build.
The significance for September 2010 is that the codebase is frozen: whatever Microsoft ships this holiday season is now what partners build against, making this the last point where the feature set could change.
First-order effects
- Microsoft's hardware and carrier partners receive the finalized image, so their fall launch devices move from development builds to production units on a fixed feature set that includes the Facebook integration TechFlash noted.
- The developer ecosystem gets a stable target — app work shifts from chasing changing previews to building against the shipping OS.
Second-order effects
- Carriers and handset makers competing for holiday shelf space now differentiate on hardware and pricing rather than software tweaks, since the OS layer is identical across devices.
- Rival smartphone platforms face a refreshed Microsoft entrant timed for the holiday quarter, forcing them to counter-position against a unified, integrated-social experience rather than the fragmented Windows Mobile legacy.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Microsoft has transplanted its PC-era release cadence — one authoritative RTM gate per product — onto mobile, which would make future phone updates rarer and more consequential than competitors' faster iteration loops.
The trend: Microsoft is extending its proven desktop RTM playbook — seen with Windows 7 and Office 2010 — into mobile, betting that a single polished, integrated release can relaunch its phone business.