Mel Sampat

Normally the departure of a key program manager does not signal positive things about a product, particularly with only a few months to go before it ships. But Mel Sampat said today that his decision to leave Microsoft's Windows Phone team to start his own app development firm was actually a vote of confidence in the company's potential to support a strong ecosystem of third-party apps.

To be clear, he's well-grounded in reality. In a phone conversation today, Sampat acknowledged that he was uncertain about Microsoft's chances for challenging the iPhone and Google Android as recently as a year ago. But in the time since, things have started to turn around for the company, culminating with the positive reception for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 Series at last month's Mobile World Congress.

"When we saw the way the market responded to (Windows Phone) 7, everyone at Microsoft was thrilled and excited," he said. "Soon after MWC is when I decided, well, if this is how the market is going to respond, if we are a legitimate alternative to the iPhone and Android, then I should get out there and try to do something more with it."

That "something more" turned out to be a new company, Mist Labs, founded by Sampat in Silicon Valley with an undisclosed amount of angel funding. As first reported yesterday by MobileCrunch, Sampat has ideas for his own Windows Phone 7 apps, and he also plans to work with other companies to bring their iPhone apps to the Windows Phone 7 Series platform. He said he'll focus on Windows Phone 7 primarily, but may also find opportunities to develop apps across multiple platforms (which explains the iPhone and Android handsets pictured on the Mist Labs site).

Helping to explain his decision is the fact Sampat developed applications for early versions Windows Mobile operating system before joining Microsoft. That was back in the Wild West days of Microsoft's mobile platform, before the iPhone, when there was no central marketplace for Windows Mobile apps. Now that the model has matured, Sampat feels particularly confident in his prospects for developing successful apps.

He also sees a window of opportunity in betting on the Windows Phone platform before others catch on. Among other things, he plans to assess concepts that have worked on the iPhone and position himself to bring similar apps to Windows Phones, potentially enjoying a first-mover advantage.

"Opportunity exists to bring a lot of the successful ideas over to Windows Phone. It’s a brand-new platform," he said. "There’s very little risk of it going away like maybe the Palm OS might. If there are successful ideas that worked for the iPhone this is the time to bring them to Windows Phone 7."

Sampat said one possible hurdle in his mind is the switch to managed code in the new Windows Phone 7 Series platform, which will make it difficult to completely port the features of some existing Windows Mobile apps to the new Windows Phone devices, if those features rely on native code.

For now, Sampat is on his own at Mist Labs, but he hinted at the possibility of an asset acquisition through which he would join forces with an existing Windows Mobile app development firm.

"I absolutely loved working at Microsoft, and it was a very tough decision for me to leave," he said. "I’ve been a Microsoft fan since I was very young. I love the culture, I understand the platform, and I have great friends there." At the same time, he said, "I have this streak in me that won’t let me be a full-time employee for too long."