Windows Phone 7 To Be GSM-only Until Mid-2011

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Well, that explains that. Microsoft has confirmed that Windows Phone 7 will be only available for GSM phones and GSM carriers until the “first half of 2011″. Why? According to Microsoft’s Greg Sullivan, speaking to CNET, “We had to make some trade-offs. Even Microsoft doesn’t have unlimited resources.” Huh?

Judging by comments from Microsoft insiders, it sounded like Microsoft was going for sort of a full court press on WP7 availability at launch. It sounded like the tech giant was angling for a phone on every major carrier around the world near its (rumored) mid-October launch window.

We know this sort of ‘blanket’ approach has worked for Samsung and the Galaxy S. Their Android phone has been available on tons of carriers and in kind, has sold 10 million phones. If you’re relaunching a mobile OS like Microsoft is, this sort of blanket approach is a smart move. So, with everybody expecting Microsoft to launch Windows Phone 7 devices, it’s a bit odd to see them make this move.

Here’s more comments from Sullivan, again, talking to CNET:

For the worldwide market, the vast majority of phones are GSM phones, so we focused on GSM first and then plan to deliver an update that will have great CDMA support in the first half of 2011. That’s device availability in the first half and we’re very confident of that. That’s probably a conservative estimate.

Sullivan went on to liken the lack of CDMA support on the software to the lack of copy-and-paste in Windows Phone 7. They only have limited resources to finish this thing, so they’re going to pass on CDMA support and copy-and-paste.

While GSM is the global standard and (as CrunchGear’s John Biggs put it) “CDMA is about as international as American beer”, there are a few areas where CDMA is important. Obviously, in the US, the #1 and #3 major carriers (Verizon and Sprint) are CDMA carriers). But CDMA is also popular in areas like China and South America.

This confirmation from Microsoft comes after one of the big stories of the day was that Verizon wouldn’t offer a WP7 phone at launch. The tech blog circuit (including this one) speculated that this was due to some new hatred between Verizon and Microsoft over the Kin debacle. Verizon denied it, and well, looks like the Kin had nothing to do with this.