Windows Phone 7 is the successor of the Windows Mobile platform and has been launched in Europe and Asia on October 21, 2010. For the USA, it will be launched on November 8, 2010.
Windows Phone 7 becomes popular because of its new interface design. Some people says, it can compete with other more popular mobile OS such as iPhone and Android because it integrates the operating system with other services, and plans to strictly control the hardware it runs on. You can run Xbox Live directly from the device, Zune HD music + video player, Microsoft Office and more. Overall, Microsoft is very dependent on these devices to compete with the iPhone and Android.
For those who want to create Windows Phone 7 applications, Microsoft already released the Windows Phone Developer Tools that contains Windows Phone 7 emulator. Using this tool you can start building and developing WP7 applications emulates in your PC.
You can download, install and try the tool for free for 30 days trial version. Start to build your first WP7 applications using this tool. To download the software, go to http://create.msdn.com/en-us/home/getting_started. Click the ‘Install now’ link and run the setup. It is an online installation so you need to have internet connection to continue the installation.
Accept the License Agreement to continue the setup.
Select a destination folder to install the software. By default it will be installed in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\ and it needs 3.1 GB disk space. Click ‘Install’ to continue the installation.
The softwares will be downloaded first and then install it. It takes a time depending on your internet connection speed and hardware so be patient.
After the installation completed the software is ready to run. Click ‘Run the Product Now’ to run the software.
The software has been installed successfully. Now you can start developing Windows Phone 7 Applications.