Windows Phone 7 Marketplace to be Completely Redesigned?

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Windows Phone 7 is by far the most important announcement made at MWC 2010. Sure Samsung unveiled its first bada-running phone and Nokia told us more about Symbian^3 but the Windows Phone 7 OS, although coming a little too late to the smartphone business, has what it takes to become a game changer.

We’ve seen most of the features, pictures and videos of Windows Phone 7 yesterday but one thing was missing. The official pictures showing the future Marketplace support for Windows Mobile 7 handsets. As impressive it might be, a modern operating system is basically nothing without a strong app store ready to provide us with all the apps we require.

And yes, Microsoft has developed the Marketplace, an app store which was supposed to become a hit place for Windows Mobile cell phone users. The only problem with it was basically the lack of Windows Mobile 7. The current apps found in the store are working on Windows Mobile 6.x smartphones. And since Windows Mobile 6.5 wasn’t really a bestseller we weren’t surprise not to hear about the Marketplace’s performance as often as we heard about the App Store for example.

As you can see from the official screenshots here, Windows Phone 7 will have support for the Marketplace. There’s a special hub for the Marketplace and the apps in it and as you can see the design is pretty similar to the other hubs we showed you yesterday. The screenshots hint at support for apps, games, music and podcast from the Marketplace but it will be a while until users can access these WinMo 7 apps.

Developers have a fresh OS to play with and they will have to develop fresh versions of their apps that could actually run on Windows Phone 7. Everything inside the Marketplace will probably not be compatible with Windows Phone 7 so basically the whole Marketplace will have to be reorganized from scratch. Sure there are plenty of Windows Mobile 6.x handset owners. But how long will it take them to upgrade to the new OS?

As interesting the Windows Phone 7 looks now, and as pleasant-to-the-eye all these screenshots there might be, one can’t but feel that Microsoft is really behind Apple in this totally new smartphone business. And it might take them a while to catch up as they are rebuilding everything, including the Marketplace. Do you think Microsoft’s app store will have enough Windows Phone 7 content by the end of the year when the first Windows Mobile 7 handsets arrive?