For all the talk of the Windows Phone 7 Series, you’d think it was going to save Microsoft in the mobile market. That may be true, but it’s going to be an ugly transition. I’m sure few people missed the fact that Windows Phone 7 means everything that came before is obsolete, least of all the current Windows Mobile users. It’s gone. Kaput. None of the current Windows Mobile software will function in the Windows Phone 7 ecosystem.

A lot of people say it was necessary. I tend to agree. Windows Mobile was butt ugly and ran about as fast as an 80 year-old with an artificial hip. It had no evolutionary cycle, not to stay competitive anyway. But doing away with the old has left Windows Mobile with an 8-10 month lame duck period. Development is going to grind to a halt, likely within the week. That’s going to leave a lot very unhappy users who have been loyal to the brand to this point. I guess Microsoft expects that they’ll be willing to wait until the holidays for a phone with any new features.

The message from Microsoft today was clear: Windows Mobile is dead. We’re looking at an eight month grieving period at the very least.

Let me start by saying this: Windows Phone 7 is the best thing Microsoft has done in the mobile market. It is the company’s first serious entrant in the smartphone category and a real and viable competitor with the iPhone and Google’s Android platform. There, I said it. Now let’s do that thing people love to do and talk about where Microsoft went wrong.

The Windows Phone 7 (I’m going to leave that god-awful name alone for a moment) is late to the party. Just as Palm did with the Pre, Microsoft waited too long for the Windows Phone 7. It’s three years after the iPhone, three years during which Redmond was constantly lambasted for its terrible mobile experience. Three years Apple took to entrench users in its iPhone OS experience. Three years that include millions of handset sales and billions in profits. Three years Apple used to build the world’s biggest mobile development community. Microsoft is way behind. The question is, can this platform make the comeback?

I’m leaning toward yes. Everything I’ve seen so far shows a beautiful user interface that looks highly intuitive. Microsoft borrowed a page from the Apple handbook and made the Windows Phone 7 experience as similar as possible to the Zune HD. It gives Zune users a level of familiarity they will appreciate. The phone also integrates other Microsoft services that have been points of criticism for other platforms. Office, Exchange, Outlook, Windows Live, Xbox Live – they all have a home with Windows Phone 7 and have been designed to function well in that platform. Any serious Windows user will feel very at home with this platform.

That’s also the platform’s biggest downside. While most of the world is using Microsoft’s operating system, I would call a very small margin of that user base “serious.” The rest are there because of a lack of options, and a lot of people, especially young people, having been drinking the Apple kool-aid of late. How do you convince a generation of Apple students, people who have grown up playing with the iPod Touch, that Windows Phone 7 is where it’s at? The features that set this experience apart from the iPhone are business oriented as I see it. Sure, the interface is organized differently, but people are already familiar with and seemingly in love with the app system – will content hubs be enough to break that paradigm?

Windows Phone 7 has a lot stacked against it (and the name isn’t helping), a problem compounded by the release schedule. The first Windows Phone 7 series won’t launch until the holidays of this year. If you’ve been paying attention to the industry, you know that “iPhone 4G” rumors are cropping up, which means we’ll probably see the next iteration of the iPhone before the Microsoft launch. While the promise of the Zune Phone be enough to keep anxious consumers from getting Apple’s latest?

First, some background. This story has just one source. That source is a developer of a popular Twitter app for the iPhone. Said source is also a fool or just too rich for his own good.

According to John Gruber at Daring Fireball, Microsoft has made contact with at least one iPhone developer with the hopes of getting some app love for the Zune. The developer, who contacted John with the story, was apparently offered “a bucket of money” to port his Twitter app to a product that was at the time undisclosed.

I know there are reasons you might turn that sort of thing down, like loyalty to a certain brand (which I don’t understand unless Microsoft has screwed you in some life altering way), but a bucket of money sounds pretty nice to me. Don’t want to do the work? Get one of your friends to do it for a finder’s fee. I dunno, seems like something I would have jumped on.

The real news in all of this is that Microsoft is trying, and pretty hard, to get some serious app support for the Zune HD. They need it too. Sure the thing looks cool, but it’s just a media player and a mobile web browser for now. Adding some delicious apps could help them take a significant slice of that delicious Apple pie.

Just a day after the release announcement, Microsoft’s Zune HD is up for pre-order with several major retailers. As was accidentally leaked by Amazon, the new media player will cost $220 for a 16GB and $290 for the 32GB version.

Unfortunately pre-orders can only receive the black or platinum colors. At release consumers will also be able to choose from red, blue, and green with the option to have your Zune engraved with one of 10 different designs called Zune Originals.

As I mentioned yesterday, the price puts some pressure on Apple with their iPod Touch line. The Zune HD not only upgrades with HD video playback, it costs far less than the equivalent in the iPod Touch line.

The guys at Gizmodo got some exclusive pics of the new Zune HD packaging along with word that the device will be available September 15th. That date is a little later than most people expected, but still early enough to get some attention before the holiday season.

As for the packaging, it’s standard fare. A white box with a pic of the device in either the 16GB or 32GB flavors. There’s still no mention of pricing, though it’s expected to be something like $220 for the 16GB and $290 for the 32GB. Those prices were from a leaked Amazon page yesterday. Compare that to the $299/$399 pricetags on the same size iPod Touch and we just might see a few people migrating to the Zune, especially with the added bonus of HD video playback.