“The market validation that Nokia has put on Windows Phone is fantastic and it will help Samsung and LG and Fujitsu and all our other hardware partners,” Brandon Watson, director at Microsoft’s mobile unit, said.
Windows Phone received a major boost in February when Nokia, the largest phone vendor by volume, said it would swap its own Symbian platform for Windows Phone.
The first handsets from Nokia using the new system are set to reach the market later this year, Watson said.
Nokia’s move has attracted thousands of new developers and wide publicity for the platform, which currently has only a 2 percent share of the handset market.
Handset vendors including Samsung Electronics, HTC, LG, Sony Ericsson and Motorola Mobility use Microsoft but only in a small portion their range.
The US software giant stepped up its push into the cellphone market earlier this week with the launch of new software codenamed Mango which it hopes will help it close the gap on smartphone leaders Google and Apple.
Google and Apple together control more than 50 percent of the smartphone market.
Watson, who is in charge of developer relations at Windows Phone, said easy-to-use software tools were the key in trying to lure over developers from established platforms like Apple and Google.
