All three will retail for $199 with a two-year contract.
During the Windows Phone 7 launch event Oct. 11 in New York City, Microsoft and AT&T executives suggested the carrier would introduce three Windows Phone 7 devices in November, but declined to offer exact dates for either the HTC Surround or LG Quantum. The Samsung Focus has always been tied to that Nov. 8 street date.
All three smartphones differ slightly in their hardware: the LG Quantum features a physical QWERTY keyboard, the HTC Surround a slide-out speaker and kickstand, and the Samsung Focus an ultra-thin form-factor. Thanks to Microsoft's strict minimum requirements, each of the trio features a 1GHz processor, three mechanical buttons, and the "pane of glass" form-factor popularized by rivals iPhone and Google Android.
Windows Phone 7 will initially be available only on GSM-based networks such as AT&T and T-Mobile, with Verizon due to follow in early 2011.
During an Oct. 21 keynote talk at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2010, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer suggested that a potentially hard road awaits Windows Phone 7. "We have a lot of work to do to get into the game," he told the audience of CIOs and other IT pros. "We will need to push for features that are not there in the first release."
That means the steady addition of enterprise-centric capabilities, including cut-and-paste, not present in the smartphones' initial release. Analysts remain split about the potential impact of Windows Phone 7, with some--including Gartner itself--hypothesizing that the platform will remain fourth or fifth in the smartphone market through the next few years. Microsoft, of course, is betting untold millions of dollars on a more positive outcome.
During his talk, Ballmer also sought to downplay Windows Phone 7's potential success.
"Within the next few months, people will get their hands on them," he said. "We'll have a sense of whether [they're] resonating." Nor could he resist taking a swipe at Google, whose smartphone strategy--porting the Android operating system onto many different manufacturers' devices--closely mirrors Microsoft's own: "I agree with one of our competitors when they remark about the incoherence of another competitor's ecosystem."
Meanwhile, the full slate of initial Windows Phone 7 devices can be viewed here.
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