Here we are at CES 2011 in Las Vegas, the largest consumer electronics show of the year. Windows Phone is here in the Microsoft space, showcasing our progress and we are really pleased with the reaction to Windows Phone since we unveiled it less than a year ago. Since then we have launched nine phones with 60 mobile operators in 30 countries while continuing to add new, high-quality apps to the Marketplace with over 5,500 to date. This means Windows Phone owners get access to more than 100 new apps every 24 hours and more than half of our customers are downloading a new app every day. We are most pleased with the feedback from people around the world on how much they are enjoying their new Windows Phone and hearing about areas they want us to focus on next. We are laser focused on delivering phones people fall in love with.
Speaking of cool apps here are a few cool ones that hit the marketplace recently and we are showing off at CES today:
Kindle – browse, buy and read over 775,000 books in the Kindle store including new releases and New York Times best sellers. It also features Amazon’s Whispersync technology which will save your place across devices so you can pick up right where you left off.
Fruit Ninja – a mobile gaming favorite where you use your finger to slide and dice fruit as it’s lobbed on screen. Great thing about the Windows Phone version is of course Xbox LIVE meaning Gamerscore and achievements!
Pocket God – another popular mobile game that is also Xbox LIVE. You control the destiny of people living on a remote island deep in the prehistoric past. It includes multiple locations and hilarious situations, go give it a shot.
Over the next few months we will be delivering a series of platform improvements that show we are taking feedback to heart in an effort to continue to enhance the products we release. The updates will be released automatically and will include a few changes. They will include the addition of copy and paste capabilities and significant improvement in performance when loading or switching between applications. We also will release a version of the software which will allow our phone partners to release new Windows Phones on the Sprint and Verizon networks in the first half of 2011.
We took a new start with Windows Phone 7 and we are really enthusiastic about our ability to release something truly different over the long term. There is still so much opportunity to do great things and we think with the assets Microsoft can bring to mobile, we can bring many of those things to light.
Now back to CES – a gadget and consumer technology fan’s Super Bowl!