Microsoft Publicly Outs Windows Phone 8, Outlines Developer Support, Shipping This Fall

Up until today, Microsoft hasn't publicly acknowledged the existence of Windows Phone 8 (codename Apollo). After an unfortunate leak last week and a video meant for hardware partners prior to that, a handful of new features in the next build have already been outed. But like most leaks, it doesn't quite paint the whole picture. They rarely do. Microsoft is shifting the core kernel of Windows Phone over to one that's a bit more familiar to developers. Yes, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will be incestuously intertwined at its NT kernel core, the same one that's been used in Windows proper since XP. The long term vision is to have a unified operating system but at this moment the notion of 'writing once for all platforms' doesn't apply. It will eventually but there are some baby steps to get to that point. A shared core benefits everyone involved: consumers, developers and hardware partners. While Windows Phone 7 apps will work on Windows Phone 8 the same won't be true in the opposite direction.

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