Windows Phone 7 has arrived! Does anyone care? We're sure some people do, but frankly, the mobile platform race is and has been about two horses for the entirety of 2010. And no matter how much money Microsoft throws at Windows Phone 7, that's not likely to change.

But the success or failure of Windows Phone 7 is largely irrelevant at this point. The most interesting part of this launch, I feel, is what it says about Microsoft. After years of near futile attempts to break into mobile and embedded devices, Microsoft has had little success. Windows CE was almost ubiquitous for a few years there, forming the basis of handheld devices, kiosk machines, and even the Sega Dreamcast videogame console.

But nowhere in that history did Microsoft engender in its users the sort of vibrant love seen in iPhone and Android developers. I'm, frankly, surprised that Microsoft was unable to build a real development community for its phones and mobile devices in all this time. The company undeniably "gets" developers, and has dominated the enterprise development tools market since the very beginning.

But mobile developers tend to be lone-gunmen. While enterprises are really in to mobile development these days, the majority of the mobile apps you hear people mention were created by solo developers, or were put out by consumer-facing companies like Facebook. These are not the sort of people who pay for IDEs and tools. They're also all about velocity.

Even with Visual Basic and dozens of Pocket PC form factors, Microsoft never really clicked with developers in mobile. Enterprises and OEM companies that turned PocketPCs into one-use devices, like barcode scanners and magstripe swipers were the only people who really got onboard the Windows CE train.

The interesting thing here is that Microsoft seems to understand this. For Windows Phone 7, the team was made in the image of Microsoft's highly successful Xbox team: the idea was to start from scratch, break with the past, and become hip.

And if those are your goals, Windows Phone 7 is surely a success. The interface is clean, simple, and fully understands the limits of the tiny screens used in these devices. Compare that to the tiny Start menu on PocketPC's, way down in the corner, waiting for a stylus tap.

Sadly, Windows Phone 7 will need two years worth of full-speed community contribution in the form of apps to catch up to Android and iPhone. That's just too much headwind for anyone, even Microsoft.