Looks like Microsoft’s Brandon Watson got more than he expected when he Tweeted about webOS devs switching to Windows Phone. In a follow up Tweet, he notes the overwhelming response:
“…I have >500 emails in just the last 22 hours. Had to rethink the algorithm for responding to all.”
Brandon Watson is senior director of Windows Phone 7 development at Microsoft. He put the word out to published webOS developers shortly following HP’s decision to discontinue webOS hardware, offering webOS developers hardware and assistance if they wanted to switch to WP7 development instead. Good on Watson for recognizing an opportunity when he saw one.
Smart thinking.
What he said.
He probably didn’t expect that there were more than 500 published webOS developers. I’m a little surprised myself.
All joking aside, bear in mind that WebOS has been around since early 2009, so I suspect this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Of course Microsoft is going to feel overwhelmed. Any positive move in their direction is going to be shocking. This past quarter they dropped to four percent of the market.
You can bet Microsoft is going to be banging this drum long and loud until it’s way overdue that they should stop. Any publicity’s better than none.
Peter, you are ever the voice of peace and reason. I must confess I wasn’t thinking about WebOS’ existence before the Touchpad. I pretty much equated the two so in my brain WebOS died after 49 days. I sincerely wish those >500 developers good luck on Windows Phone 7.
If 500 is just the tip of the iceberg, I wonder where the rest of the iceberg is? Apparently not in Redmond. Perhaps Cupertino or Mountain View…?
Wait a second. He said he got over 500 emails but *didn’t* say he got over 500 emails about Windows Phone from over 500 individual senders, although he certainly stated it in such a way as to give that impression — without actually saying anything that could later be proven a direct lie. I could very well be that over 499 of those emails were support complaints from Windows Phone users, or complaints from his development team about how it sucks to try to force Windows bloated architecture into a phone.
Sometimes, what is carefully omitted is more important that what is actually stated. Put another way, sometimes you can use a literal truth to lie for you.