Senior Director

Today we’re sharing several new Marketplace and App Hub enhancements that dramatically expand your opportunity with Windows Phone 7.5.

Today I’d like to revisit a topic I raised in June with my post, “How Marketplace Manages Bulk App Publishing.”

Windows Phone 7.5 devices are now available in Japan and Russia, and with several new phones announced this month, the rate of apps submitted that take advantage of new Windows Phone features (like fast app switching and multiple live tiles) is steadily increasing.

We promised in late July that August would bring another round of developer news. That day has come! Today we will begin accepting and certifying Mango apps through the App Hub. This means that new and existing titles optimized for Mango features like fast app switching, background audio, multiple and double sided Live Tiles, better Search integration and more will begin publishing in a matter of days.

Just four weeks after the release of Internet Explorer 9, Dean Hachamovitch today announced the first platform preview of Internet Explorer 10 at MIX 2011.

There certainly appears to be more than a little enthusiasm for browser numbers these days, and it’s great to see early adopters adopting the latest browsers across the industry. With Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4.0, and Chrome 10 all hitting their final releases recently, drawing instant comparisons around downloads or initial usage is a natural temptation, but unfortunately you can’t do it quite yet. Here’s why.

I mentioned last month that we would be down in Austin, TX for SXSW. Since then there has been plenty of speculation and interest as to what might be happening. Exactly twelve months from the first Platform Preview of IE9, on Monday March 14th we will celebrate the developers and designers who are making a more beautiful web for all of us.  We will release the final version of Internet Explorer 9 for download beginning at 9 p.m. Pacific.

It snowed here today in Redmond. While the team is spending a lot of time indoors working on the final version of Internet Explorer 9, we think it’s time to plan on going somewhere warmer.

Building off the excitement from last week’s IE9 Release Candidate event in San Francisco, we have another event on the horizon for IE9.

Last month, we saw coverage about Internet Explorer posting a worldwide gain in usage share. That encouraging news continues today with Net Applications’ release of their July usage share numbers. Net Applications reports overall Internet Explorer share grew 0.42% worldwide in July, while Firefox lost 0.90% share and Chrome dipped 0.08% in share.

When customers sit down to browse the web, they have more choice than ever about the browser they’ll use. Here in the Internet Explorer team, we look at usage share as one of several results that come from developers targeting, partners supporting, and customer preferring the latest version of Internet Explorer. Last month we saw some encouraging news about browser preference.