Windows Phone 15th Anniversary
A few days ago, on the 21st of October 2025 marked fifteen years since Windows Phone was released by Microsoft. Windows Phone for me is like a buzzword bingo at meetups where I'm bound to bring it up at some point despite it being long gone and increasingly either a distant memory or unknown to many today. Windows Mobile had been around for a long time and was (relatively) a popular choice for the smart phones of the time and had my eye on a particular device as was finally in a position to buy one and give it a go, it was taking longer and longer to come out and during that time Microsoft acquired Danger who made a phone made popular by Paris Hilton of all people, but was a sign they were entering the hardware market themselves so wondered if it was worth waiting for those devices instead!
"Windows Phones" based upon those form factors did appear, but these were not the phones I was waiting for as they were the Kin One and Kin Two which are pretty much forgotten about and were cancelled in the same month they were launched, the reason? Windows Phone, another strategy to modernise Windows Mobile had happened and Windows Phone 7 Series had been announced, a name that got quickly shortened to Windows Phone 7, but a major promise that got my attention was that Silverlight developers, which I was one at the time, could write their apps using that platform, which sounded like a much easier option so was wise to hold off after all and knew then my first smart phone would be a Windows Phone.
Microsoft offered programmes to encourage developers I was able to get onto the early access programme, although didn't get to be one of those who had a physical device to test on, the Samsung Taylor, but instead would be able to publish my own apps as part of the first thousand apps to be made available at launch. I had a Silverlight-based Zune Social application which was the social sharing element of Microsoft's music service at the time so was a natural one to be my main one with ZuneCardr and another was an app to view Gamer Cards used by Xbox to show off your achievements and recent games played so a similar but simpler application called GameCardr.
I was able to develop these apps using the developer tools and emulator to build my first mobile applications, I also wrote tutorials to help and encourage others to start porting their skills to Windows Phone which although used Silverlight I was a Visual Basic developer before that and Windows Phone used C# so I made the switch, and never looked back as am a C# developer to this day and have barely used Visual Basic since! I was able to create the functionality I needed to get the application to a good state, but I'd never written a mobile application before and wanted to make sure it would work on a real Windows Phone.
Prelaunch of Windows Phone there was an opportunity to travel down to Manchester to try out applications on a real device, the same Samsung Taylor that a few key developers had been able to use and was my chance to try out my apps on the device, both worked well with just a couple of things I needed to tweak and change to support offline scenarios that were easy to see and try on the phone. Microsoft had a design system called Metro for Windows Phone that apps could use so both apps fitted perfectly with design of the operating system and although Zune was there, it didn't yet have the Zune Social features and the Xbox feature lacked some of what I had done so the apps would be useful to people at least.
I continued to work on my two Windows Phone applications and published them to the store ready for launch, that day came on the 21st of October 2010 with some buzz and publicity but not as much as you would expect with all the coverage centred on London which made sense. However, up here in the North East I waited outside a mobile phone shop to open and almost rolled under the shutters and purchased my first smart phone and Windows Phone, the HTC HD7 which was the top-end device available at launch, I was probably the first person in Newcastle to get one, maybe in the North East but can't be sure about that, but hope I was!
I unpacked my Windows Phone when I returned home and of course the first thing I do is install my two apps and make sure they worked well on the final hardware, which they did both apps worked as expected and the final features of Windows Phone still lacked the Zune Social and some elements of my Xbox app so was happy to be able to offer those! Windows Phone saw the launch of the Zune pass here in the UK which was a music subscription service so was able to take advantage of this and having an app with Zune in the name meant it started to gain a few downloads in the days and weeks that followed.
I worked on my Zune Social app which displayed the music you were listening to that was shared with Zune Cards, similar to the Gamer Cards on Xbox, and thanks to Zune Pass and a lot of figuring out I got the app to play the tracks you or your friends had listened to that were shared on these Zune Cards, something the actual ones couldn't do they just offered a preview, I allowed you to listen to the whole track for those with Zune Pass. I expected the day to come when Zune Social would appear on Windows Phone and supersede my app, but that day never came and my app remained the only way of doing that, gaining over 330,000 downloads in its lifetime!
I did a talk about my Windows Phone apps at a local event and was approached by someone there who happened to want a Windows Phone version of their app so I got a job working for them because of that which was a real accelerator for my career, it even enabled me to save up to travel to Microsoft Build in 2012 where a free Windows Phone and even a Surface tablet were given to everyone there! Another commercial app was for a company who had invested in using Windows Phones and needed their app ported over and used that income to get a Surface Book which I used to develop further mobile examples and still use today for recording podcast episodes!
Windows Phone seemed to be doing well enough to evolve into Windows Phone 8 two years after Windows Phone 7 in 2012 which enabled apps that could run on Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Apps is the key word for Windows Phone as this was clearly an attempt to improve the lack of key apps on the platform, some were there like Facebook but developed by consultancies not the company themselves and others like Instagram were created by third-parties but were blocked and taken down, even Microsoft created YouTube application was blocked by Google so many popular apps that remain to this day were missing from the platform and this didn't help.
Windows Phone users on Windows Phone 7 had to buy new phones for Windows Phone 8 which was not too bad but the idea of buying phones every couple of years was still a new concept so did cause some friction but I wanted a new phone anyway and got a few more years out of Windows Phone until it ended when Windows 10 Mobile was announced in 2015. I developed a new app for Groove Music, the successor to Zune, which thanks to Windows 10 offering every form factor as a target, worked on this new platform, desktop and others too, even Xbox would support the app!
However, unlike Windows Phone which evolved and grew within a couple of years, Windows 10 Mobile started to shrink within a couple of years, this was despite Microsoft acquiring Nokia in the Windows Phone era to exclusively make devices which had incredible features such as high-resolution cameras, wireless charging and always on displays which are common on high-end smart phones today. I'd seen the journey of Windows Phone 7 from before launch through to the transition to Windows Mobile 8 and end with Windows 10 Mobile.
It was great to support Windows Phone platform with my own apps, but the lack of other key apps discouraged most people from joining too in any sustainable number. It is interesting to look back to fifteen years ago at all the amazing innovations in Windows Phone such as live tiles, much like Widgets, and modern clean look that wouldn't seem out of place today and something I look back at and Windows Phone today is still something I'm always willing to talk about to cross off that buzz word bingo!