What Are Push Notification Services?

For Windows Phone 7, Microsoft created the Push Notification Services, which are cloud-based services, to be able to send messages directly to your application for each unique user. The phone will receive these notifications and route them to your application, update a Live Tile, or show a Toast notification that the user can tap to launch your application.

Although these messages are a good way to update Live Tiles and provide Toast notifications, they do not guarantee delivery because mobile devices are prone to communication issues, network service availability, or even being turned off. As a result, you should consider Push Notification Services as a complementary notification framework for your application. Despite these possible drawbacks, they are still very unique and exciting services that will enrich and enhance the user experience of your application on Windows Phone 7, so don’t ignore them.