I'm not going to make too much of the fact that the first Windows Phone 7 devices for sale in the U.S. are already priced lower in some places than anticipated on this day one of their availability.

At Amazon, the HTC HD7 is priced at $149.99 with a two- year T-Mobile contract. The Amazon price is the same on AT&T's Windows Phone 7 handsets with a contract, which includes the HTC Surround and LG Quantum. (No price is listed yet for the Samsung Focus.) That's about $50 less than Microsoft was stating phones would cost when I published my Windows Phone 7 review last week. Amazon says the various phones are available for preorder.

What is clear, of course, is that Microsoft's very future in mobile is riding on the success of these and other Windows Phone 7 handsets. I haven't been able to get to a phone store to gauge early interest; suffice to say I'm not hearing reports of anyone having to line around the block to nab one of these initial handsets.

As I pointed out in my review, Windows Phone 7 devices sport an attractive new user interface built around "live" tiles and hubs. And the phones have built-in versions of Xbox Live, Office, Zune and other Microsoft properties. But the first devices also have far fewer apps than rivals such as the iPhone and Android, and are missing some key features out of the gate, such as copy and paste and third-party multitasking.

We'll be watching early sales with interest.

By Ed Baig