Microsoft has confirmed 5 hardware partners launching their phones for the Windows Phone 7 during a briefing with Pocket-lint. Senior product manager for Microsoft, Greg Sullivan stated that handsets will be expected from Asus, HTC, Samsung, LG, and Dell. However a launch date wasn’t given, yet.

What’s more interesting is that there would be several shapes and style from different manufacturers, from QWERTY phones (think Blackberry Bold), to slide-phones with QWERTY keyboard (think Blackberry Curve), to pure touchscreen phones (like Apple iPhone and HTC).

Now many of you might have seen the video of Samsung’s Windows Phone 7 being tested. However, Samsung stated that its final product does not resemble of that, and those that we saw being reviewed early are purely for developers only, as final product would be different from it.

Microsoft is not thinking of challenging Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android phones, but rather something else.

“By the time we will launch, we won’t have to worry about stealing customers from other operating systems; there will a new wave of smartphone users to embrace for us to still be successful”.

[via Pocket-Lint]