In a rather candid chat with The New York Times, Joe Belfiore, an engineer on the Windows Phone team, admitted that the platform was indeed a response to the iPhone. In his own words:
"Apple created a sea change in the industry in terms of the kinds of things they did that were unique and highly appealing to consumers. We wanted to respond with something that would be competitive, but not the same."
At a time when the entire industry was largely inspired by Apple's work, it was very unlike Microsoft to start off with a strategy to do something different.
The NYT article offers an interesting look back into the history, specifically the inception, of Windows Phone:
in December 2008, Terry Myerson, who had just taken over engineering for the mobile group,
