While most in the mobile industry are moving towards dual-core processors and bigger, better-looking displays, Microsoft is trying another approach.  According to the Joe Belfiore at Windows Phone Team blog,Windows 7.5 will now support a series of low-cost devices, such as the Nokia Lumia 610.  The hope is that by reducing the requirements to run Windows Phone 7.5, Microsoft can expand their smartphone marketshare.

Our approach is balanced to provide the greatest amount of application compatibility with the least possible overall performance impact. As a result, we’ve been able to reduce our minimum memory and processor requirements to accommodate 7x27 processors and 256 MB of memory while still enabling nearly all 65,000 published apps to run on these new phones.

-- Joe Belfiore

In a proactive move, Microsoft has already identified and blacklisted approximately 5% of the apps in Maketplace as "incompatible" with these low-cost devices.  The app developers have been notified, and other developers have the ability to hide their app from the low-cost device users if they simply feel their app does not run smoothly.

To assist developers in this task, Microsoft has updated the Windows Phone SDK (currently available as a technical preview only) that provides developers access to the 256MB emulator to determine how apps will install and run on these new devices.

For developers, Joe Belfiore has a couple suggestions to help take advantage of this news:

1. Check out the new SDK and make sure your app performs just the way you want it to in low memory, and
2. Remember that it’s up to you to select new markets as they come on line through your App Hub account at http://create.msdn.com so that new customers see and install your app. It doesn’t happen automatically.  Don’t miss out on these potential customers!

-- Joe Belfiore