Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Developers Get Azure Toolkit

Matthew Weinberger

March 24, 2011

1 Min Read
Microsoft Windows Phone 7 Developers Get Azure Toolkit

windows azure

Despite a ton of pre-launch hype, the Microsoft Windows Phone 7 smartphone operating system is still lagging behind competitors both in terms of market- and mind-share. In the consumer space, it’s getting trounced by the Apple iPhone and Google Android platforms. And in the enterprise, Research In Motion’s BlackBerry is the gold standard. But now Microsoft has released the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7. Can connecting Windows smartphone applications to Microsoft’s platform-as-a-service offering turn things around?

According to the Windows Azure Team Blog entry, the toolkit includes phone and compute emulators to help with smartphone app development. And according to that same blog, it also includes:

  • Binaries for your Windows Phone 7 applications

  • Project templates to optimize new phone application creation

  • Sample applications in both C# and VB.NET

  • A dependency checker that checks the prerequisites required by the toolkit

  • Setup and configuration documentation, toolkit content review, a getting started walkthrough, and troubleshooting tips

Undoubtedly, there are more than a couple of developers out there who’ve been waiting for something like this, and TalkinCloud hopes we’ll see some new and innovate applications using the Windows Azure interconnectivity. But The VAR Guy’s Dave Courbanou raised some Windows Phone 7 questions when he got to try it out, and it has a lot of ground to regain.

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