Windows Phone 7 includes a music player that looks strikingly similar to the software that comes on the Zune HD media player. Soon it looks like the video games and other apps designed for the Zune HD may also be available for Windows Phone 7.
I reviewed the Zune HD a few years ago and I was impressed at how well the little guy with an NVIDIA Tegra processor and widescreen touch display performed as a media player. I was underwhelmed by the tiny number of apps for the platform, especially when compared with the hundreds of thousands of apps available for the Apple iPod touch. But there were a few gems, including a Texas Hold ’em poker game that I grew rather fond of.
In a recent podcast, a Microsoft exec explained that the company is looking at porting some of the apps it developed for the Zune HD to Windows Phone 7. There are a handful of third party apps for the Zune HD, and it’s entirely up to the developers of those apps to decide if they’ll launch WP7 versions, but it looks like the first party apps will be making the leap soon.
Another interesting tidbit is that Microsoft is working to bring more apps to the Zune HD as well. Windows Phone Secrets reports that some of those apps may include an email app, a note-taking app, and several additional games.
I’d love to see Microsoft release a next-gen Zune media player that simply runs Windows Phone 7 so that users can choose from the thousands of apps available for that platform instead of the dozens of apps available for the Zune HD. But I suppose this is still good news for Windows Phone and Zune HD users alike.
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