Windows Phone is the easiest platform to develop for.
By now there are two versions of this mobile operating system: Windows Phone 7 and Windows Phone 8. The main problem is that you can run a Windows Phone 7 app on Windows Phone 8 smartphone, but cannot install a Windows Phone 8 app on a Windows Phone 7 smartphone. At the same time Microsoft doesn’t provide an opportunity to upgrade Windows Phone 7 operating system to Windows Phone 8.
That is why I will describe the development for Windows Phone 7, so that your app will be accessible for all Windows Phone devices.
You need to download and install the following tools for getting started with the development for Windows Phone:
- Microsoft Visual Studio. This is the best IDE in my opinion. It is powerful and provides a lot of tools for convenient software development. It has the Express Edition which can be downloaded for free.
- Windows Phone SDK (emulator is included into the SDK). It is also a free tool. You can choose between downloading the SDK for Windows Phone 8 and the SDK for Windows Phone 7 (the latest OS version is numbered 7.8).
After downloading and installing this software you can start write your first app for Windows Phone.