Microsoft Pursues webOS Developers With Free Phones, Tools & Training
In the olden days, when one wanted to court someone, they offered flowers, luxurious gifts, extravagant dates and even songs to serenade their heart’s desire.
Microsoft can be akin to a suitor pursuing a lovely dame as it’s offering free phones, tools and training sessions to webOS developers who may want to jump ship, now that webOS is in danger of becoming extinct after Hewlett-Packard’s announcement to cease production of webOS devices, including the TouchPad and smartphones.
“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.,” Tweeted Brandon Watson, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Windows Phone 7 development last Friday.
Before the day was over he was flooded with almost 600 e-mails from interested developers, and as of yesterday, they already received over 1,300 e-mails, as stated in one of Watson’s tweets. webOS developers were directed to Microsoft’s APP Hub and are offered tokens for the tools they wish to download. They were also invited to the 2-day demo-rich online course Windows Phone Mango Jump Start that ends today, featuring Rob Miles and Andy Wigley, two of the most sought-after Microsoft mobile development MVPs on the planet.
As some developers are quick to take this opportunity, the transition will not be as easy as sending an e-mail, as they have to learn, or at least familiarize themselves with writing codes for C# and .Net framework. It’s quite different from creating apps for webOS where code is based on HTML and JavaScript. Microsoft’s certainly wooing developers, but its platform has already made some gains. The Windows Phone developer blog reports that they’re on the cusp of surpassing 30k apps, a feat achieved twice as fast as Android, and nearly on par with Apple.
Though HP stated that they have no plans of really killing off webOS with plans of incorporating it in printers and household appliances, it’s not the most promising thing HP can tell its developer community when the mobile industry is so competitive right now.
You can’t really blame the developers. Many have yet to determine if webOS is just a lost cause. And Microsoft’s strategy of courting these distraught developers may just make their Windows Phone 7 a strong competitor against the iPhone, eventually.
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