The blogosphere seems to be identifying two potential dates for Windows Phone Mango to ship.  Based on a comment SteveB made about Christmas some are trying to say December.  Based on a comment from Microsoft about Imagine Cup participants getting a Windows Phone Mango phone by the end of September others are saying September.  Given fall begins in late September and ends just before Christmas, and Microsoft has said “fall” for GA, the rumors pretty much cover the range!

Windows Phone 7 was targeted for the Holiday 2010 shopping season and was available in October in Europe and November in the U.S.    Indeed in the U.S. the Holiday, or Christmas, shopping season officially begins the day after Thanksgiving (“Black Friday”) but in reality people now start shopping well before Thanksgiving.  I’m 99.9% sure that SteveB was talking about the season and not Christmas Day itself.  And the end of September would be just a few days shy of the anniversary of Windows Phone 7’s own General Availability.  So the bottom line is that I think Microsoft is targeting availability of new phones with Mango for almost exactly a year after Windows Phone 7.

As for Mango updates, as I mentioned earlier those could be delayed for a considerable time new phones with Mango pre-installed become available.  Of course, I hope that isn’t the case.  But to put a fine point on it, I still haven’t gotten the certificate revocation update for my Samsung Focus.  And how many months has it been since Microsoft started the update process for that trivial update?