CNET went to check to see how sales were going on debut day for the Windows 7 Phone from HTC, the HD7, and well, things were not flying off the shelves. AT&T and T-Mobile were both selling the phones, but there were not lineups. Their informal survey of two stores in their Bay Area revealed that the stores had each sold about 10 units, not that huge. While nobody from the companies were releasing numbers, the suggestions are that Windows 7 Phones sold about 40,000 units on their first day – according to this story.

Do you think Windows 7 Phone will be a big player?

As we discussed back in February, Microsoft has been working on their Windows 7 Phone version. Well, today, they announced the first 6 phones that will be running the new operating system, and they are an interesting mix. HTC, everyone’s favorite smart phone company it seems, announced 3 phones: HTC Surround for AT&T, the HTC Pro for Sprint, and the HTC HD7 for T-Mobile. The Samsung Focus and LG Quantum will be available on AT&T, and the Dell Venue Pro will be on T-Mobile. This gives Microsoft some pretty good coverage over the larger systems, and represents a significant release for the company.

CNET has a pretty good look at the OS here. Obviously, Microsoft products are front and center, like the Bing search engine. This is a major play to be the middleman search company for millions of phone users, the fastest growing part of the search universe. This many give Microsoft a chance to catch up a bit with leader Google, who’s free Android OS is becoming more and more common.

I found this story over at Reuters about the company ISuppli that has looked into the tablet market, and has decided (somehow) that no matter what happens, Apple will continue to dominate the tablet marketplace. The most telling quote from the story is that they firm doubts that anyone will match the “overall performance experience” of the IPad, which would include it’s performance as well as the many apps and such available for it.

However, I have to say that this seems to fly in the face of the growing number of tablet style devices in the pipeline. In the mainland Chinese market, many companies have already developed knockoffs of the ipad running all sorts of different operating systems, and as the production of these devices ramps up, the costs of the components continues to drop.

Major players such as Microsoft and Google are both on track to have various companies using their operatings systems on tablet devices, especially as 2011 rolls around. Micorsoft may be a very strong competitor in the business marketplace, and Google’s ever expanding Android operating system continues to see huge improvements in it’s app offerings. It is very likely that within a couple of years, there will be little difference in Apps between Apple and other companies.

While Apple may enjoy the first mover position, they are very likely to be facing stuff competition. The real question is the actual size of the tablet marketplace, which may be in it’s infancy, similar to what happened when the original Palm Pilot style devices came out. Almost all of the players from that initial market have fallen to the wayside, and the devices have morphed into the smart phones we know today. Perhaps today’s tablets are nothing more than a step towards something much more useful and robust.

The marketplace on smart phones continues to evolve rapidly, often growing faster than the infrastructure. Taiwan based HTC has been a leader, a company that has gone from almost no market share outside of it’s home market to a market leader in a very short period of time.

It is one of the reasons that HTC’s move to build specific Windows Phone 7 based phones is interesting. Obviously, Microsoft is putting a lot of time, money, and effort into it’s new mobile OS, and HTC has snatched up the chance to bring it to the market place. Not only is HTC going to market, but they are very confident in their product placement.

In this writer’s opinion, HTC is doing the smart thing by hedging it’s bets all around, not getting caught up in any single operating system or with any single partner company. By producing phones that run Android and others that run Windows Phone 7, they are buying themselves potentially a bigger part of the market, and minimizing the risks if one or the other turns sour at some point.

However, there are problems, and most of it has to do with where the real world hits the virtual wireless world – at the towers. Clearwire is the company that is building out much of the 4G networking for companies like Sprint, and they are facing a daunting task: Negotiating for tower placements in big cities. While the phones are churning out fast and the take rate on the 4G phones is incredible (apparently the HTC 4G phones were hard to find, because demand was too high), it can take 12 – 18 months to get permission for a new tower, and in a bigger city, it takes many towers to do the job.

I found this interesting article at CNET that pretty much explains the problem, and shows where the real world realities can get in the way of technology advances. So while 4G phones are gaining popularity, it may still be a while before the network services to support them will be available all over the US.

Google has made it official, the last batch of Nexus One phones are being sold, and then the entire brand is dead. Basically, the HTC made phone never really got traction in the market place, shipping only about 135,000 units. Google’s choice to go with direct sales pretty much seems to be the culprit, keeping the phone out of retail stores and also keeping it out of packages with providers. While it was a cool phone, it appeared to have missed the market a bit, in part because the smart phone market jumped almost a generation in a short period of time.

Read more of the story here or here

HTC is continuing to expand it’s markets, and is always looking for something new. The burgeoning tablet market is likely one of their next steps. They see not only a market for tablets, but they have women specifically as their target market.

At the Open Mobile Summit held in London, HTC’s vice president Europe Dr Florian Seiche said “Our study found women social networking while watching television was a likely use for tablets”.

It appears that HTC sees enough of a market to merit getting into the tablet world.

Is HTC planning an OS to rival Apple? Are the planning to buy out Palm, which most seem to think of as the lame duck of the smart portable device market right now?

“We continue to assess, but that requires a few conditions to justify” having our own system, Cheng Hui-ming, chief financial officer of the Taoyuan, Taiwan-based company, said in a phone interview recently with Bloomberg. Bloomberg also mentions in this article that Cheng declined to comment on a possible takeover of Palm.

HTC has spent the last few years in rapid growth mode, and has managed to straddle the field with phones using both the Windows and Android operating systems. Under Android, they have used their own set of tools and appearance options. Certainly moving to their own OS would free them of certain bonds or restrictions, and allow them to completely control the user exprience from end to end. It appears that the company sees players like Apple and RIM as being a step above the other players because they have their own unique products, rather than fighting in markets crowded with other players.

Read more of the article at Bloomberg here.

In what some see as a stunning admission of being crowded out of many of the smart phone markets, and perhaps as a preemptive strike against the upcoming Google Nexus 1, Apple and NeXT have filed suit against Asian smart phone maker HTC, alleging all sorts of patent infringement and the like. Public opinion on this is mixed, but many of the industry pundits are pointing to this as frustration on Apple’s part as they risk losing their dominant position in the smart phone market.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

However, it should be pointed out that the patents in question are entirely software related, and those sorts of patents aren’t always the strongest. Further, Apple appears to have unleashed the nuclear option as well, adding 10 more items to a list submitted to the ITC (International Trade Commission), attempting to shortcut the process and perhaps gain some sort of blockage against HTC phones coming into the US.

At the end of the day, Apple may or may not win this lawsuit and ITC action, but there is no doubt that many potential customers will now see them as bullies rather than innovators.

Fast growing cell phone manufacture HTC is hedging their bets and making sure they don’t miss either side of the phone markets. To that end, they announced that they will be a supporter of the new Microsoft Windows 7 Mobile, while continuing to build and sell many Google Android phones.

I would appear to be a wise move, as it means that they will be able to handle any market shift between the phone types. It also means that they don’t have to always directly compete with the Google phones with their own products, and expands their potential market.