In June 2011, the team behind ChevronWP7 announced that it had received approval from Microsoft to enable Windows Phone app developers to unlock their handsets and run programs not available on the Windows Phone Marketplace. The program was officially released in November for $9.
However, it looks like the great experiment in an authorized "jailbreak" app for Windows Phone has come to an early end. In a post on the ChevronWP7 web site, the team states:
Our data indicates that most developers simply unlocked their devices for non-developmental reasons and never went all the way to publish an app in the marketplace. There was also some confusion about the actual purpose of the ChevronWP7 service – some folks thought we provided SIM-unlock capabilities, while others thought we were a hacker group providing full root access. On top of this, there were a larger than expected number of support emails.
The good news is that Microsoft has agreed to give everyone who purchased the ChevronWP7 unlock a free one year membership to the company"s official Windows Phone App Hub. The site also says that the team will continue to work with Microsoft, saying, "All sides are still very interested in the hobbyist and homebrew developer communities."