Earlier today, a developer evangelist for Microsoft was quoted as saying that all Windows Phone devices would get an upgrade to the "next major version" of the operating system. Now, a trusted source close to Microsoft tells us that is absolutely not the case, that instead there will be no upgrade path from Mango to Apollo. This matches up with a previous report from Mary Jo Foley and explains the particular language Microsoft used when it responded to the story earlier today, saying "We have stated publicly that all apps in our Marketplace today will run on the next version of Windows Phone. Beyond that, we have nothing to share about future releases."

The news that Mango phones won't be getting an update to Windows Phone Apollo doesn't bode well for everybody who just purchased a Nokia Lumia 900, to say nothing of the other phones that Microsoft and its partners have managed to sell. If there is a silver lining to be found in the dark cloud besides future app compatibility, it's that this major break could mean that Apollo will contain some major feature improvements over Windows Phone 7.