The day that Microsoft had keenly been waiting for, has finally arrived. Their new mobile phone operating system, the Windows Phone 7, has been released to the hardware manufacturers. The Windows maker deems this to be their biggest milestone.

Smartphones sporting this new operating system should start shipping into the market soon. Perhaps they'll be out, right in time for Christmas. Dell, Asus, LG, Samsung and HTC mobile phones are supposed to be the initial devices featuring this platform.

Microsoft had earlier released a preview version of the OS to some, in the press and in the developer community. The mobile phone platform had received both positive and negative feedback at that time. However, the OS had improved in leaps and bounds when compared to the predecessors - the Windows Mobile series.

How this new OS will fare against the powerful Apple iOS, Google Android, Palm's (now HP) WebOS and RIM's Blackberry OS, remains to be seen.

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