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Verizon to offer a Windows Phone 7 device sooner rather than later?

By | February 28, 2011, 6:28am PST

Summary: Is Verizon about to launch its first WP7 handset, the HTC 7 Trophy?

WinRumors reported last week that Verizon was poised to announce its first Windows Phone 7 device, possibly as soon as this week. In spite of Verizon’s claim that it “had not set a date for a (WP7) device launch,” there may be some of the expected Verizon HTC 7 Trophy devices floating around.

On February 28, Engadget posted a screen shot of the purported Verizon Trophy handset. And on February 25, PPC Geeks posted a screen shot, also said to be of a Verizon HTC 7 Trophy. The PPC Geeks shot showed an alleged shot of the handset running the Windows Phone OS 7 build number 7.0.7355.0.

(The PPC Geeks screen shot is at right. Click on it to enlarge.)

As Istartedsomething’s Long Zheng noted, that particular build is not the “NoDo” update for Windows Phone 7, which Microsoft officials have said they plan to roll out in early March. Instead, Zheng said, the 7355 build is an interim build, which might be a pre-RTM build of NoDo. (NoDo, by the way, is the Windows Phone OS release that adds support for CDMA — which Verizon requires — among other features.)

The HTC 7 Trophy features a 3.8 inch screen, a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, and 5 megapixel camera. MobileTechWorld.com has a walkthrough of the HTC 7 Trophy device.

Microsoft officials are not offering any new clues or updates about Verizon’s planned Windows Phone 7 launch. “We have nothing further to share beyond our earlier statement: ‘Verizon announced they will bring Windows Phone 7 to market in the first half of 2011,’” a spokesperson repeated when I asked.

WinRumors said last week that Verizon is expected to make the first WP7 Trophies available in late March. Sprint, the other U.S. carrier that only last week unveiled its first CDMA WP7 handset, is going to start shipping the WP7 HTC Arrive devices on March 20 for $199.

In related news, there is still no refreshed release available from Microsoft of the first OS update for Samsung WP7 handsets. Microsoft ended up yanking the version of the update for Samsung handsets last week after complaints by some users of a variety of problems, including some that bricked their handsets. This first OS update is the precursor to the coming NoDo refresh.

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Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

Disclosure

Mary-Jo Foley

Freelance journalist/blogger Mary Jo Foley has nothing to disclose. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get). I do not own Microsoft stock or stock in any of its partners or competitors. I have no business ventures that are sponsored by/funded by Microsoft or any of its partners or competitors.

Biography

Mary-Jo Foley

Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 25 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She has kept close tabs on Microsoft strategy, products and technologies for the past 10 years. In the late 1990s, she penned the award-winning "At The Evil Empire" column for ZDNet, and more recently the Microsoft Watch blog for Ziff Davis.

Got a tip? Send her an email with your rants, rumors, tips and tattles. Confidentiality guaranteed.

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RE: Verizon to offer a Windows Phone 7 device sooner rather than later?
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Hrm. 3.8" - i was hoping for a 4" device as my first smartphone, it seems to be the "sweet spot" for screen size. Now the only question that remains is, do i wait for the other wp7s to show up on vzw? or jump on the first one in the door??
@bc3tech , dpeneds on long you are wiling to wait. The "7.5" Mango devices will be available around Christmas and *may* have, (I repeat MAY) have the Kinect front facing cameras. If you can't wait 9 months then get a device now if you find one you like.
@bc3tech I totally agree.
We can only hope this is true! If Verizon can get WP7 out the door as soon as possible that will be a huge boost in revenue for both Verizon and Microsoft. There are millions of people out there waiting to upgrade to WP7 on Verizon. I'm staying positive that this rumor is true.
@Loverock Davidson
Dude go with iPhone, much better platform and the apps rock! stay away from Android!!
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@Hasam1991
iPhones have antenna issues, android phones have linux issues. So the only contender left is WP7. Verizon should be doing all it can to promote WP7 if it wants to see its sales increase.
@Hasam1991 WP7 > iPhone.
@Loverock Davidson

"iPhones have antenna issues, android phones have linux issues. So the only contender left is WP7."

WP7 will have Windows issues.

Gee, most people would choose the LESSER of evils.
@Loverock Davidson It will be a significant boost to us WP7 app developers too. The Sprint and Verizon WP7 offerings have a chance of increasing our revenue by 50% I believe. Very exciting because we're already making decent money as it is and we only started rolling out apps towards the end of January.
@Tiggster
Agreed, I am also welcoming this because I have chance of increasing more downloads for my apps. happy
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YAWN.
itguy08 28th Feb 2011
Another Turd....
@itguy08
Even this turd is probably much better than any Android device out there...
@itguy08

Just like you?
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What? You have a twin?
Will Farrell 28th Feb 2011
@itguy08
@itguy08
agree! Verizon should steer clear of windoze!
@Linux Geek are you always an a$$hole? you must also be a fan of the gaystation as well. cant tell who is worse. iFanboys or Linux Fanboys/Fandroids
@Linux Geek you are the other turd that itguy08 was referring to
@Linux Geek Yeah, I don't see the point. With W8 reportedly a bare 10 months away? No time to get traction before the inventory is slagged as obsolete. No way you can get enough volume production to get the unit cost down. Stranded customers aren't repeat customers. And competing against the Preferred Partner, Nokia? It's NoWin all the way around.

Asus, purportedly a launch partner has given up the WP7 ghost without launching a single phone. Moto has gone all-Android. Sony Ericsson thinks being number one in Android is "a goal for the whole company to unite around": http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-03-01/sony-ericsson-to-add-u-s-china-developers-in-android-push.html

HTC is still playing both sides because if they don't they'll get sued. But you can bet they know which side of this bread has butter on it, and it ain't the Microsoft side. Anybody can see that. Just go down to your local phone store and count the handsets on display. For HTC to put WP7 on some phones that are very similar to their Android phones and dish them in sample quantities is just a cost of staying in business. Gotta pay the troll at the bridge.
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Why would Verizon want a WP7 device?
Michael Alan Goff 28th Feb 2011
I hear they only sold about.... 1,000.

Or maybe they sold more, can't be sure from the talk around here.
@goff256

The facebook numbers as of a month ago confirmed 840,000 unique WP7 handsets integrated with Facebook. Android has a 1:4 ratio of handsets integrated to Facebook vs not. Using a range of anywhere from 1:1 to the Android 1:4 gives a range of 1.6 million to 4.2 million in the wild as of a month ago.

Based on the slow-launch-gather-steam look to the graphs I would guess that anywhere from about 2million to 5.5 million WP7 devices are in the wild at this point
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I know there were more
Michael Alan Goff 28th Feb 2011
I was just mocking the group who constantly comes in here and writes it off as a complete failure.

Also, Microsoft says 2 million licenses were sold... that was at least the last thing they said.
@SlithyTove
I would go with a lower number and at the same time which is greater than 840,000 because Microsoft said by the End of December they had sold 2 million licenses. I guess your number 1.6 million is in line with that 2 million. And as per Canalysis report Microsoft platform had been delivered to 3.1 million subscribers in Q4, and also it had been reported that Windows Mobile was 4% share of over all sales of smartphones that includes iPhones, Androids, Symbians, Blackberries, WebOS etc. and Windows Phone 7 had nearly 2%, so with simple math, I could say Windows Phone 7 had reached more than half million subscribers easily in just 2 months of its release.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/31/google-android-leading-smartphone-platform_n_816405.html#s233040&title=5__Microsoft
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Links or didn't happen
matthew_maurice 28th Feb 2011
@SlithyTove Who reported 840K unique WP7 hits? My cursory check revealed nothing like that, so let us know what hat you pulled that number from.

@Rama.NET You're extrapolating from "shipped" numbers and no where does Canalys mention subscribers. No one actually thinks subscribers have bought all the handsets MS has licensed, so your numbers are iffy from the start.

Frankly if subscribers bought a million Windows Phone 7 handsets I'm sure we'd hear about it from Microsoft. The fact that they keep on the "licenses sold" line tells me that actual handset sales aren't impressive enough to announce.
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@matthew_maurice
aren't you doing the same in reverse? Just assume others are wrong so that we don't have to hear about actual units sold?
So you can say only 1000 handsets total sold?
@matthew_maurice
Well in that case the same thing can be said to other platforms too. Canalysis reports never mentioned about subscribers, can we doubt other platforms numbers too? Also I never mentioned a million in two months, all I said was 1.6 million is in line with Microsoft's 2 million licenses. I never said there are 1 million subscribers. Did you read this sentence of my post "and Windows Phone 7 had nearly 2%, so with simple math, I could say Windows Phone 7 had reached more than half million subscribers easily in just 2 months of its release." All I was saying something above half million, not a million please.
Simple math to numbers from Canalysis reports:
X +Y = 3.1 Million Windows Phone sales.
Where as X is Windows Mobile and Y is Windows Phone 7.
now WM had 4% share and WP had 2% share, which says X=2Y.
replace X with Y in the above statement
2Y+Y = 3.1million, which clearly shows Y is little over a million(1.333 million). But I halved the value that I got by solving the above equation, because we don't have official words from Microsoft, so I said more than half-a-million. Do you need proof to my "extrapolation" more? Also Microsoft said 2 million licenses sold, not a million.
@matthew_maurice

The 840,000 was from the same person that ran the initial Facebook numbers that we heard (like 117k and 240k). I just spent 30 minutes trying to find the link without much success. There is so much search spam around the early sales numbers that it is hard to sort through.

So I probably wouldn't believe me either. wink
@SlithyTove Link, because I know you won't: http://j.mp/gl6Fom

Credit: panglozz. panglozz has been scraping the available data from various sources since WP7 launch, and I for one appreciate that work, the attention to detail and the solid analysis. I am not panglozz.

It was probably a strategic mistake to reference this research in your blog posting. If you're getting paid for this posting, you might want to gather up your personal effects.

The WP7 numbers for Facebook are duplicative for the default client and the downloaded one, as is given in the notes. You got your number by adding these duplicative numbers, which isn't good analysis. The higher number, default, is given as 476,370 for 2/28. This is against 29 million for Android, 67 million for iOS, 30 million for RIM. These are monthly active users of Facebook, not installed base or whatever, but new phones hit the default apps as part of the activation procedure and regularly thereafter so it's a way of tracking things when we have no other data.

Panglozz himself suggests that changes in the reporting may indicate that somebody is tracking this research and may be deliberately swelling WP7's numbers through nefarious means. This can be accomplished in a number of ways left as an exercise for the reader.

WP7 new user growth for the latest period is given as 3,155 units per day against 175,000 for Android, 229,000 for iOS, 81,000 for RIM. Share of new user growth for WP7 is given as 1.06% for the latest period, which is a decline of more than half from the 2/12 peak of 2.18%.

Properly read the Facebook stats may under-report. I might give WP7 credit for 5-600K active users now in proper analysis - but nowhere near 800k. As for your 2-5.5 million devices in the wild comment, I know not what to say. Even Microsoft hasn't claimed to have presold more than 2 million licenses to put the OS on phones, let alone build and ship them. I fail to see how they could have activated 4.7 million phones in the last two days without anybody noticing. They couldn't possibly get rid of that many phones in two days at gunpoint - too many logistic problems to properly execute that operation at scale.

The data is interesting, the collection is thorough. I recommend that other readers review it and form their own opinions.

My own take from this data? WP7 is not KIN but it's not being accepted either. Less than two percent share and shrinking is not going to become relevant without a material change, and more carriers, ads and phone makers isn't going to do it.

And now a personal anecdote: I know exactly one person who owns a WP7 phone. He thought it was an Android phone when he bought it, and it's too late to take it back. We try to be sensitive about his issue and not play with our phones too much when he's around, nor talk about our cool new apps. It's awkward.
@symbolset

"Link, because I know you won't: http://j.mp/gl6Fom"

Actually, that link looks like a link that was referenced in the post I saw. Glad you found it, it's a better source than mine was anyway.

"It was probably a strategic mistake to reference this research in your blog posting. If you're getting paid for this posting, you might want to gather up your personal effects."

Put down the tin-foil hat. The government is not tapping your phones, and the illuminati does not exist either.

"The WP7 numbers for Facebook are duplicative for the default client and the downloaded one, as is given in the notes. You got your number by adding these duplicative numbers, which isn't good analysis."

Actually I think it was arrived at via some stats geekery around how many Facebook users are "monthly active users" vs the total number of users.

Looking at the data myself I'm inclined to go with the 5-6k range for WP7 users integrated with Facebook as well. But note that this only includes people who open up the Facebook settings and enter their Facebook account or who use the Facebook app. This is not done during activation so the Facebook numbers are a bare minimum figure only.

Using this admittedly better data set and using the conservative 1:1 ratio of Facebook WP7 users to non-Facebook WP7 users still puts us somewhere around 1.2 million devices on the low end and using the 1:4 ration about 3.0 million on the higher end.

"Even Microsoft hasn't claimed to have presold more than 2 million licenses to put the OS on phones, let alone build and ship them. I fail to see how they could have activated 4.7 million phones in the last two days without anybody noticing. "

That two million number only covered what was sold through the end of December. It's now March.

My own personal anecdote: I'm the only person I know who owns an Ipad. I've never seen one in the wild either.
@goff256 Maybe you should stop listening to rabid fanboys and do your own research?
@jhughesy
Don't worry, he was just mocking DonnieBoy&Co, who constantly say WP7 sucks and the phones are just channelled up at store shelves, etc.
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Rama is right
Michael Alan Goff 28th Feb 2011
Mockery is the new... something.

Besides, mocking trolls is why I come here anymore.
I was actually hoping that VZW would launch with more than one model. A CDMA version of the Samsung Focus would have been my first choice followed by an HD7. A Trophy will do for now. I can always give it to my wife when the 7.5 devices roll out.
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I was thinking the same thing
Will Farrell 28th Feb 2011
But I've been pushing her to get an iPhone bacause she loves the ton of Fart Apps available!
Good news for Verizon customers awaiting the WP7 devices! This device does not scream 'Wow' to me as it is pretty bland looking, but it will probably suffice for those looking for an entry level smartphone with plenty of storage. Hope Verizon changes its tune regarding the Nokia/WP7 devices - if they get those, they'll definitely get my money!
Question- (please excuse if this exposes ignorance- will the WP7 be 4g (LTE?) Thanks!
@mjames57
I don't know, but at the same time I don't think so.
@Rama.NET Thanks...i don't think so either, but have not been able to verify...
@mjames57
Not as of the moment.

BTW, there are two competing "4G" technology: LTE and WiMax
@mjames57

I would say at some time eventually. Not with the initial release, though.
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...both HTC WP7 models, coming to both Verizon and Sprint, only offer up to 16gb of memory, total, with no microSD expansion slot.

Sorry, but...Deal. Breaker.
@Theseus 16gb is plenty since everything else relies on the cloud. with a zunepass you can listen to all the music and watch all the video you want. as long as you are in an area with good coverage or are under wifi
@Eric12341
But I don't want to pay for a zunepass, I want all of MY music on my device.


And I want to hot swap SD cards.
The couple of times of year that I buy music, I can schlep over to Best Buy and pick up a CD for $7.

Come on, this is something even dumbphone flip phones can do right now. You mean to tell me that the nth version of the Razr is more advanced than WP7?
@Theseus WP7 doesn't support removable SD storage. You can swap out your microSD cards on a WP7 phone, by inserting the card and reflashing the phone. But then all the data on the card is lost, and the card is no longer compatible with any other device even if reformatted. If you have a movie collection on multiple MicroSD cards, too bad. It's not supported.

If you put your MicroSD card into a WP7 phone and get it to work, it's lost forever. It won't even reformat to work in a PC or camera after that, and you can't use the stuff that was on it in the phone either. That's part of the wonderful way that WP7 works, to protect you from accidentally watching ripped movies.
@symbolset

@symbolset

Isn't the formatting issue a low-level thing, and not a physical card issue? Which would mean that all you would really need to do is to low-level format the card with some software/device which supported direct read/write. I've also heard that you could format the card in some Nokia devices which can low-level a card. Therefore, I wouldn't say lost forever.

The SD expansion on a WP7 phone wasn't actually designed to give you removable storage, it's designed to give you expandable storage, hereby the difficulty with the formatting and putting in the card in the first place. Still, it beats not having expandable storage at all.

Also - hard reset != reflash. Two fundamentally different ideas. Reflash means the firmware gets erased and rewritten, which most likely isn't what happens.
Any updates on the Windows Phone 7 device at Verizon? We've been waitng a while and see there were some rumors in November 2010 and then this seems to be the latest about it coming in February. I also attended Game Developer Conference in March and spoke with a MS person who said "keep your eyes open in the coming month". Here we are in May now and nothing new has been reported? Any more information out there?
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