Same thing applies for almost any mobile platform and is more/less severe based on how the "home page" UI is developed. On Windows Phone 7, there are even fewer

Same thing applies for almost any mobile platform and is more/less severe based on how the "home page" UI is developed. On Windows Phone 7, there are even fewer slots to put applications, 8 to be specific. But thankfully they are hubs so can combine functionality of multiple apps in it. e.g. the email/call/facebook etc functionality is all driven off the People hub. All games are driven off the games hub etc. If you think about it from the platform's perspective it's bad that it can only give front page to a limited set of apps. It makes it extremely competitive for the developer to make a good app to get on that page.