tequila bomb

Windows Phone 7 Jailbroken…

[H]ackers have already gained root access Windows Phone 7′s registry and file system — their methods simply aren’t yet bundled up in a nice little user-friendly package.

This is hardly news. It was inevitable.

What interests me though, is the effect this will have on Microsoft’s online store. Locking people into a curated store experience, like Apple’s App Store in iTunes, is something that I believe your Microsoft traditionalists (who are going to be the core people buying and evangelising these devices – at least initially) are not going to be so easy to convince to agree to.

Plus, with Windows Phone 7 being wide open so early into the market, it seems to me that Windows Phone 7 Cydia clones may well gain traction more quickly than Microsoft’s App Store is able to.

I think we may see Microsoft have to become a lot more draconian than Apple has ever been about App Store lock-ins. Perhaps they plan to leverage a similar system to their XBox Live subscription gaming network for their mobile phone eco-system? And perhaps they hope that will lock people in. But we already know that the gamers tastes on mobile devices are very very different to those on console networks. So I am not sure how much leverage a tie in to XBox Live is really going to gain Microsoft.

Will Microsoft dare drop the “ban-hammer” on jail-broken Windows Phones? I doubt it. But it’s fun to think about!