Microsoft seems to be aiming Phone 7 at businesses as much as (if not more than) consumers, with a strong tie-in to Office likely and linkage to Windows Live services as well. The developer tools are well-structured — better, we’d say, than those available from Apple or Google — and Microsoft is hot to earn developer respect and support with the product.

The question of just what the much-advertised “different kind of phone” means hasn’t yet been answered explicitly, but we think that the Windows Phone 7 approach will be much more application-driven, with applications playing a role more PC-like than phone-like. However, there’s no question that it has a very strong cloud computing focus, which may mean it’s going to pick up the standard dropped by Kin as a client-to-the-cloud phone.