Windows Phone 7 woes continue -- top smartphone development exec leaves Microsoft

Can the news get any worse for Windows Phone 7? Charlie Kindel, general manager of the Windows Phone Developer Ecosystem, is leaving Microsoft to start his own company. Given that it's vital for the success of the Windows Phone 7 for developers to write apps for it, this is a big blow.

Kindel is a 21-year veteran of Microsoft. He announced on his blog that he's leaving Microsoft to start his own company. It's tough to know exactly what that company will be. He says "It has to do with sports, advertising, mobile, social-networking, and, of course, the cloud."

He leaves at a time when Windows Phone 7 continues to flounder. Net Applications reports, for example, that Windows Phone 7 has only a 1% market share of new smartphone sales, and Microsoft's share of the smartphone market is 52% less than a year ago.

Windows Phone 7 is also well behind both the iPhone and Android when it comes to apps, and apps sell phones. There are now 27,000 Windows Phone 7 apps, compared to hundreds of thousands for both iOS and Android. Having the executive in charge of getting developers write apps for Windows Phone 7 is clearly a setback for Microsoft.

Every once in a while, a product comes along from a major company that seems jinxed. For now, that appears to be Windows Phone 7's fate. That's too bad, because it's a solid, useful smartphone OS. Nokia releasing devices based on Windows Phone 7 will help, but the platform will need more help than that. And with Kindel leaving, it needs even more help than it did a day ago.