With less than a month since its official debut Windows Phone 7 has already achieved it's first major milestone: 1,000 available applications. Although Microsoft's app Marketplace pales in comparison to its main competitors, including Google which recently announced breaking the 100,000 mark, the achievement is still noteworthy when you consider the old Windows Mobile platform took seven months to reach this figure since its app store launched.

Furthermore, the 1,000 app milestone was reached in just three weeks since the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace opened its doors and we are still two weeks away from the U.S. launch of actual smartphones running the new platform, so it certainly seems like Microsoft is headed in the right direction. Devices powered by Windows Phone 7 begun arriving in Europe and Asia late last week, while the U.S. launch is scheduled for November 8.

The company also released an update to its Windows Phone 7 developer tools recently which brings things like improved Bing Maps performance, a new Windows Phone Connect utility that facilitates connection between the Phone and a PC for debugging purposes, and the Windows Phone Capability Detection tool which scans apps submitted to the marketplace to discover what APIs it uses so devs can't hide the use of restricted facilities within their apps (basically a security mechanism by which users have to authorize an app to use of things like location services or push notifications).