Great achievements don’t happen overnight—they evolve over time based on a series of successes that converge and drive you onward. My favorite soccer team, Seattle Sounders FC, started life way back in 1974 in the North American Soccer League and only achieved their recent success in Major League Soccer through working hard to raise their game and improve their results.
Here at Microsoft, we’ve always focused on raising our game. In my 20 years with the company, I’ve worked on projects ranging from the Microsoft® Windows® 2.0 SDK and COM, to Windows Media® Center and Windows Home Server. Each new generation of products raises the game for both users and developers. And now I’m proud to be part of the team that’s driving our latest achievement, Windows Phone 7.
Windows Phone 7 is a different kind of phone, designed for life in motion. It’s a change from the past that incorporates smart design and is aimed at users who need to manage their personal and business lives as an integrated experience. Or, to be more accurate, a series of integrated experiences that include People, Office, Pictures, Music and Videos, Windows Market Place, and Games.
When designing Windows Phone 7, we stepped back and thought hard about who our customers are and what they need from a phone. Everyone on the Windows Phone 7 team woke up every morning thinking “What can I do today to make the end-user experience great?” This was true of even the people focused on building the developer experience. The end user always came first; our mantra was “Enable end users to personalize their phone experience with great applications and games and ensure that developers can be profitable.” It has been extremely gratifying to see the incredible innovation being brought forward by third-party developers building Windows Phone 7 applications and games.