[Rajiv_N]

I would like to know what the development time difference is between these platforms. Also, what is the WP7 SDK like?

For a single developer this could be a good time to write WP7 apps. But iOS is so attractive because of its SDK and the wealth of third party libraries available for developers to leverage.

[bad_user]

     For a single developer this could be a good 
     time to write WP7 apps

Personally, I doubt that.

In my circles I have a lot of non-technical and technical people. I don't live in Silicon Valley, or in the US, so the echo chamber that a lot of people from this community does not apply to me.

I see a lot of iPhones and Android phones. Galaxy S and S2 were huge hits. Low-end Android phones were hits too, like LG Optimus One - great value for the price. I see my friends and acquaintances with these phones, like a friend of mine who's a taxi driver has a Galaxy S in his pocket. But I know NONE with a WinMo 7 phone. Its market share is completely abysmal.

Now, this company may have had the first mover advantage. Cool for them - however, personally I want a smaller piece of a bigger pie. The reason for that being that this pie is growing, exponentially even. Competition may be fierce and you won't get rich over night, however the 700 million users that Facebook has will be nothing compared to the number of people carrying Androids in their pockets, 3 years from now. A lot of people have ridden the first wave, especially when it comes to Apple's App Store. However a bigger wave is coming and I don't want to invest the limited resources I have in Microsoft's me-too-me-too platform.

Another problem is one of trust - WinMo 7 is the successor of WinMo 6, but it's a completely different platform. This is understandable, as WinMo 6 simply sucked and in my view it was the same story as with IExplorer 6 - they got something working, then they reinvested resources in the latest fad du-jour, leaving customers and developers disappointed, WinMo 7 being their latest attempt at preventing irrelevancy. I have no trust left for Microsoft to do the right thing in regards to its developers or customers, fucking with their learned knowledge all over again, or leaving them in the dust. I mean - they are discontinuing Silverlight for Christ's sake.

[cwbrandsma]

On WinMo 6, I think you are skipping over the history with that one. When it was released (WinMo 2,3,4,5,6,6.5) the hardware was too expensive for the consumer market, so it was sold to commercial consumers. They biggest concern for them was business apps, photos, gps, and --wait for it-- barcode scanners. The types that could be used from 30 ft away.

For that industry, WinMob was much better than the competition (this is before the IPhone/Android was released). There were lots of models, multiple configurations, and some of them even made phone calls.

Since then, smart phones hit the consumer market, the app needs have change (consumers don't need lazer enabled barcode scanners and multiple gps hardware configurations). But, WinMob 7 doesn't replace WinMob 6, because of the complete lack of external hardware drivers. IPhone really doesn't fill that gap either. Just Android.

And, Silverlight (and Flash) are being discontinued as Web platform(s). It still exists for development on other systems. But it could be argued it is just WPF at that point.

[__float]

I hate to be this pedantic, but the fact that you're calling in WinMo 7 seems to show your lack of experience. The platform is Windows Phone, and I believe they've done quite a bit right this time. And to note, they've made many firsts that iOS and Android have eventually picked up--or will soon do so.