Microsoft offers free Windows Phone gear to disenfranchised webOS devs

(Alternate title: "From Dead to Dead Last")

Now that webOS has zero official hardware manufacturers supporting it, Microsoft is hoping to lure webOS developers over to Windows Phone by giving them free hardware, training, developer tools, and so forth.

This officially began on Friday with a tweet from Senior Director of Windows Phone 7, Brandon Watson. who said "To any published webOS devs: We’ll give you what you need to be successful on #Windows Phone, including free phones, dev tools and training, etc.”

Over 500 people reportedly responded to this initial message, to which Watson issued the following official reply:

"First things first. Thank you so much for reaching out to the Windows Phone team to signal your interest in bringing your talents to our platform. To be honest, we didn’t expect this level of response, so we were caught a bit flatfooted. It took a few days (on the weekend) to pull all the mails together into one place to allow me to respond in a smart way and not retype every mail by hand. Consider this a first step in building a relationship with the Windows Phone team. We are psyched to have you aboard and to see what your imagination can do on the Windows Phone canvas."

Windows Phone is currently the fifth-place mobile operating system behind Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and Symbian.