I am betting there are a lot of people who are wishing that they were working for Microsoft right now considering that the company just committed to giving every employee a brand spanking new Windows Phone 7 on launch.

Now this move by Microsoft is interesting on a couple of levels. The most obvious one is the one that Paul wrote about earlier in that this will help create a company-wide feeling of evangelism:

By giving everyone a Win Phone 7, they are putting one product into the hand of every employee, a product to which Microsofts Mobile future and vision is very closely tied. It makes everyone part of the team, gives everyone a vested interest (even if it is small) in seeing the product succeed (beyond that of my employer sells it) and it turns each and every employee into a potential Win Phone 7 evangelist.

Paul also notes, quite rightly, that this is an unusual move for Microsoft and potentially risky. However I think the second interesting thing that Microsoft has done will negate this risk to some extent. I spotted this; as did Ed Bott, in a post by the anonymous Microsoft blogger Mini-Microsoft this morning regarding Microsoft’s earnings call today.

According to the post Microsoft is giving employees a shot at developing for the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace:

WP7: application developers in the queue? We need to re-enforce the cool apps that we’ll have ready when WP7 is launched. In a move that has totally delighted me, Microsoft is giving every employee the ability to write and deploy WP7 applications (and, what, ability to get a device at launch, too?) – wow! Now’s the time to truly show off your stuff and write for WP7 and get your app out the door.

This might not be the same thing as Google’s famous 20% time that they give employees to work on private project but given the talent pool at Microsoft this could see Windows Phone 7 launch with some pretty incredible apps available for it.

Like Ed Bott says in his post:

Microsoft has the opportunity to create some app superstars overnight by letting employees develop for Windows Phone 7 and sell through its store.  I can even imagine a promotional program in which Microsoft gives new Windows Phone 7 buyers 5 bucks worth of credit at the Marketplace to buy apps. The lion’s share of the proceeds should go straight to the developer, even if it’s a Microsoft employee. The company could even pay a bonus for apps that became category leaders, getting great ratings and high downloads. With the company’s stock flat-lined for the last decade, I suspect most Microsoft employees would jump at the chance to make a few extra bucks. A talented developer whose day job involves tweaking the Windows TCP stack might be able to produce an amazing game. Someone working for the Xbox team mght have a killer idea for a video editor. I’ll bet Mark Russinovich could do an astonishing set of phone-centric tools and utilities a la Sysinternals. You never know until you turn them loose.

This is a very smart move on Microsoft’s part and a move that almost guarantees that the marketplace will be well stocked with some great apps when Windows Phone 7 launches.

Smart move Microsoft, on both counts.

Related posts:

1. Windows Phone 7 – No Porn Apps – We Don’t Need A Nanny Microsoft
2. Developing for Windows Phone 7? Here’s some recommended resources on MSDN
3. Is your country one of the lucky Windows Phone 7 launch countries?
4. All Microsoft Employees To Receive Free Windows Phone 7 At Launch – An Evangelism Gamble?
5. Interested in writing games for Windows Phone 7?