Windows Phone 7 "Official Launch", Oct 11th

There's been huge speculation about when Microsoft would launch Windows Phone 7.  Microsoft had already pre-booked an event to be held in New York City on October 11th but some commentators such as technology blogger Paul Thurrott said that Microsoft held an event there every year and this wouldn't be it, so people started talking about October 25th instead.

Now Microsoft have come clean and announced that October 11th IS indeed the correct date.  In an event announcement on their website they say...

Windows Phone 7 Worldwide Launch Event @ the NYC Microsoft Technology Center Monday 10/11/10

Monday, October 11, 2010 3:00 PM - Monday, October 11, 2010 4:30 PM Eastern Time (US & Canada) Welcome Time: 2:45 PM

The event will include a five-minute keynote, 20 minutes of presentations on Windows Phone 7 and the following hour taken up by Q&As and one-to-one demonstrations with staff from T-Mobile.  In a nice touch there will also be a raffle at 4:30 (perhaps with tea and scones?)

Anybody who'll be in New York on the day and would like to book can do so on the Microsoft website but journalists and technology bloggers will be bagging all the limited number of seats very early today.

Windows Phone 7 is a very exciting launch for Microsoft and cements their return to excellent product innovation that, in fairness, began recently with Internet Explorer 9.  Apple and Google, who will inevitably be watching the launch to see how much press attention it garners, will have to up their game to stay ahead of Microsoft in the future.

This will be doubly hard as Microsoft have already announce that they will be launching Windows Phone 7 with a $1bn worldwide promotional budget, and that's on top of whatever the handset manufacturers and carriers throw at the launch as well.

While October 11th will be eagerly awaited by many people, this pundit can't help feeling that microsoft didn't miss a trick by having the launch event a day earlier in the same way that the "3" 3G mobile network in the UK launched on 3/3/03.

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