Windows Phone 7: App store, free dev tools and Silverlight all in the Mix10

Windows Phone 7 Series is courting developers this week at the Mix10 conference in Las Vegas, giving us a glimpse of the applications we can expect to see on our WinPhev phones at the end of the year.

The spotlight was on apps from Associated Press (pictured above), which showed a 'panoramic' user experience -- basically, multiple home screens that you slide between with the swipe of a finger, like we've seen on WinPhev's user interface. The AP app will have news, social networking and photos.

Other apps included a photo-editing app, a comic-book reader that uses Silverlight's 'deep zoom' feature, an app from stalker-fav Foursquare, the ubiquitous Shazam, and several games.

Microsoft also showed off its new Windows Phone Marketplace, which has been redesigned so it looks totally different from the iPhone App Store wannabe that we saw released with Windows Mobile 6.5.

One of the best ways to get developers onboard is to help them make money from their creations, and MS is offering credit-card billing, operator billing -- where your purchases show up on your phone bill -- and ad-supported apps. Makers can also set their own demo period so people can try before they buy.

Coders will get access to the phone's accelerometer, GPS, push notifications, hardware-accelerated video, multitouch controls, camera and microphone.

The Silverlight dev tools for writing apps are free -- if you fancy a go at geekery, the dev tools are available for download today from developer.windowsphone.com and include Visual Studio for Windows Phone and an emulator.

There was also a new WinPhev handset in the house, an unnamed unit from Samsung. Microsoft's Joe Belfiore showed WinPhev running on it, but no specs were announced and the grubby guttersnipes gentlemen of the press were not permitted to handle it. Slashgear has a little more, and a few photos and videos, here.