Windows Phone 8: Open for Business

Yesterday at the BUILD Conference, Microsoft’s premier conference for developers, we announced the immediate availability of the Windows Phone 8 SDK.  This represents a significant entry into the smartphone platform market and with it, Microsoft introduces a truly competitive mobile platform that is ready to take on any competitor head-on and win in both user experience and functional capability.  What is truly interesting about this launch is that not only does it provide great end user features that focus around your lifestyle, but it is is the best platform for business with a great number of features that will pique your interest as a professional developer.  The time is now for you to target Windows Phone with your apps! Windows Phone 8 represents a sea change in how people interact with their smartphones.  We built the phone to be the central digital device to cater to you, rather than you cater to your device.  With great end user features like Live Tiles and Live Lock Screens to the way our unique Modern UI design is propagated across the platform, it is truly a personal mobile platform.  Now with Windows Phone 8, we are adding some great business-focused features to the mobile platform like full device encryption, Work Hubs for LOB apps and many others that make Windows Phone 8 the clear choice for mobile computing in the enterprise (or even small and medium sized business!). So how do you get started? First and foremost, download the Windows Phone 8 SDK right now.  It’s free (and comes with an Express version of Visual Studio 2012) and if you have a paid version of Visual Studio 2012 already (i.e.:  a non-Express SKU), then the SDK integrates seamlessly into that developer experience as well