Those who spent money on a Zune HD which was originally released back in September 2009, may remember the small market for applications that was available on the device. As Windows Phone 7 became the next big thing for Microsoft"s portable media efforts, some expected the applications they had become used to on their Zune HD to be readily available on WP7. This was not originally the case, however Microsoft have stated that they are currently working on porting over the company"s officially created applications.
While the total amount of applications is too lengthy to list, Microsoft will most likely spend its time porting over several games such as Checkers and Snowball as well as several productivity apps such as Windows Live Messenger, MSN Weather and MSN Money. Several may remember other applications such as Twitter and Facebook, however given that there"s already content available on the marketplace to do similar tasks it is unlikely Microsoft will invest the time to port those over.
The news came originally from Dave McLauchlan, who was speaking on behalf of Microsoft on the Zune Insider podcast. Specifically in regard to this news story, he stated "The apps that we have built internally for Zune, we’re actually looking at porting those over to Windows Phone. I can’t tell you when or what the exact dates are. But that’s something we’re definitely looking at".
While the amount of applications on the Windows Phone marketplace has grown significantly since its launch, some take the viewpoint that Microsoft"s experimentation with applications came with the Zune HD, which invested a notable amount of resources to kick start developer interest in the Zune platform.
Image Source: zune.net