Microsoft used the official launch of the first Windows Phone 7 handsets this week to announce EA Mobile as an apps partner, with the games publisher creating products that support the Xbox LIVE service. The connected apps will enable customers to track and share scores with friends and communicate with other gamers across mobile devices, games consoles and PCs. When Microsoft announced its games partners during August 2010, EA was notable by its absence: named partners included Digital Chocolate, Gameloft, Glu Mobile, Konami Digital Entertainment, Namco Bandai, PopCap and THQ. According to a recent survey by Distimo, EA is the second-largest cross platform app publisher after Gameloft.

Microsoft says that EA will deliver a “broad range of titles from its portfolio of award-winning brands,” which includes Need for Speed Undercover, Tetris, The Sims 3 and Monopoly. Microsoft says that it has previously worked with EA to deliver “some of the definitive console games of this generation.”

Website MCV notes that Microsoft has rebranded its XNA Creators Club website as App Hub, with Windows Phone 7 logos added alongside Xbox 360, and that “the angle of the entire page now very much seems geared towards portable apps.” It also asserts that “the integration of some aspects of Xbox Live into the new mobile phone offering is now very much the portable Xbox that many have been predicting for years.”

Microsoft’s Windows Phone Developer Blog says that App Hub will gain an expanded “Education Catalog” in the coming months, to serve as a “central location from which developers can find and access all Windows Phone and XNA developer educational materials from Microsoft.” But it again noted that the WP7 submission process is “not yet self-service,” although the company did briefly re-open its “early access” process to more developers wanting to offer products via the Windows Phone Marketplace.

In order to drive application discovery, Microsoft has begun profiling WP7 apps on its Windows Phone Blog, social networks and through its other channels. Its first featured title is Bejeweled LIVE, from PopCap Games. As of last Monday (the day Microsoft held its WP7 events) there were 86 applications on show, both free and paid. By the time WP7 phones are available (later this month in Europe, and early November in the US), this number should hit nearly 2,000.