Microsoft Lures webOS Developers to Windows Mobile OS Platform with Free Phones, Tools and Training

In a conference call last week, Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert) provided financial results for the third quarter. Concurrently, the company also announced plans to discontinue making hardware running its webOS operating systems, including TouchPad and webOS powered smartphones. However, it will continue to explore options to optimize the webOS going forward, said HP.

TechCruch.com reports that Microsoft (News - Alert) is trying to exploit this situation by encouraging webOS developers to bring their expertise to Windows development environment. Consequently, Microsoft’s senior director of Windows Phone (News - Alert) 7 development, Brandon Watson, recently tweeted an offer to published webOS developers, “We'll give you what you need to be successful on #WindowsPhone, including free phones, development tools, and training.”

According to TechCrunch, this brave move by the Microsoft executive seems to have paid off. As per this report, Watson has received over 500 emails from interested developer within 24 hours. TechCrunch’s reporter Chris Velazco wrote that this is not new to Watson. In the past to lure developers to Microsoft Windows environment, Watson has shared his personal cell number on Twitter to field questions about the development process, wrote Velazco.

However, the transition to Windows development platform for former WebOS developers may not be as simple, reports TechCrunch. The reason being that many webOS applications were written in HTML and JavaScript, while getting the most mileage out of Windows Phone 7 requires familiarity with C# and the .NET (News - Alert) framework, wrote Valazco. This report further said that making resources available to new WinPho developers is what it needs to get the webOS developers started.

This move by Microsoft seems to be working for the software giant. As a result, the Windows marketplace’s app count is rapidly approaching 30,000, according to TechCrunch. Besides attracting former webOS developers, Microsoft’s next big strategy is working with students, wrote Velazco.

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