This isn't news really and people are confusing
announcements,
release to manufacturers and
availability to consumers.
- WM7 will be announced by MS February 2010 as planned
- WM7 will be RTM Q2 2010, as planned
- WM7 devices will show up in stores Q4, 2010 as planned
- WM6.5 will get a year solo run
- WM6.5.1 will be a bridging release between WM6.5 and WM7
- MS is not abandoning the license model to make proprietary handsets
- This is the same announcement, RTM and availability model for WM7 as WM6.5--nothing new
None of this has changed recently and there is no new news in regards to this plan. Making WM6.5 the budget OS (to compete with Android) is just a side effect and convenient. WM7 has very high hardware requirements that cost $$, so it is a premium OS. WM7 will also be MS's first complete attempt to make a consumer/pro-sumer OS that has the core components for Enterprise (what WM5, WM6 and WM6.1 focused on), so yeah, of course it will actually now compete with the iPhone at that level--once again, no news there either.
This is called rehashing old news and rewording it while leaving out technical details.