Jul 27, 2011 07:07 GMT  ·  By

The next generation of Windows Phone has gone gold, but the true question is whether or not the color “green” will be part of its future. Windows Phone 7, while a key reboot of Microsoft’s mobile operating system after the failure of Windows Mobile, has not stopped the company’s share of the smartphone market from shrinking to an almost irrelevant percentage, with estimates placing it at about 4%-5%.

Microsoft and its OEM partners did sell a few million Windows Phone 7 devices, and customers that acquired them scored through the roof, satisfaction-wise, with WP7 second only to iPhone/iOS but besting Google’s Android.

But so far, Apple and Google continue to have no match from Microsoft in terms of sales. For example, in the past fiscal quarter, Apple sold no less than 20.34 million iPhones.

The Cupertino-based hardware company pushed more iPhones to consumers in just a few months than its rival in Redmond did since the launch of Windows Phone 7.

Meanwhile, well in excess of half a million, up to as much as 550,000 copies of Android are activated each day.

As far as I’m concerned, Windows Phone 7 is as far as possible from a commercial success, and it’s only moving farther away with each passing day. Its success in a range of other areas aside, from attracting developers to innovating the user interface, and to other examples, WP7 failed to gain traction with consumers and implicitly, to be profitable.

Mango is the next chapter in Windows Phone’s life, a sort of a 7.5 upgrade sporting Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) with hardware acceleration and HTML5 support, App multitasking, text, IM, and Facebook chat threads, email Conversation View, and another 500 features more.

Windows Phone Mango has just been released to manufacturing (RTM). With the platform release having gone gold, OEMs now get the RTM code to pre-install on new devices.

“We just announced that Windows Phone Mango has hit RTM (release to manufacture) – which means it’s done and we’re sending it to our handset and mobile operator partners to get it in to the hands of customers,” revealed Microsoft’s Steve Clayton.

“Here on the Windows Phone team, we now turn to preparing for the update process. The Mango update for current Windows Phone handsets will be ready this fall, and of course will come pre-installed on new Windows Phones,” added Terry Myerson, Corporate Vice President of Windows Phone Engineering.

“In May, we officially took the wraps off of Mango, a release including hundreds of new features that create a smarter and easier approach to communications and apps, while delivering the best web experience.”

I don’t think that the new Windows Phone Mango handsets shipping starting with the fall of 2011 will make much of a difference against Google Android and Apple iPhone, with one exception.

Windows Phone Mango’s impact on the smartphone platform market is bound to grow once the Nokia and Microsoft partnership kicks in.

I was a loyal Nokia user for years, and I loved Windows Phone 7, but for the time being, my HTC with Android remains the best phone I have ever owned. I’m certainly looking to see whether Mango on a Nokia device can change this.