Microsoft hosts Windows Phone 7 developers in Vegas

Welcome to Microsoft Pri0: That's Microspeak for top priority, and that's the news and observations you'll find here from Seattle Times innovation reporter Sharon Chan.

Sliver of the market

Its smartphone software has only a sliver of the market, afterwards the company redesigned it from the ground up and gave it a new name, Windows Phone 7. For all that, many are watching and waiting afterwards Nokia, the world's largest phone maker, said it plans to make Windows Phone 7 its primary smartphone platform.

At Mix 2011, a Web and Windows Phone app development conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft plans to hold workshops on building apps for Windows Phone 7. Boot-camp sessions begin Monday, and Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president with Microsoft's mobile business, is expected to give a keynote speech on Wednesday.

The company will likely give a progress report this week on when those features will be arriving and how developers can start building them into phone applications.

Microsoft said it now has 11,500 apps available for Windows Phone 7. The company as well dropped hints in a blog post that its competitors double count apps published in different languages and "lite" apps just as wallpaper. Apple boasts 350,000 apps on iTunes. Google says the Android marketplace has more than 150,000 free and paid apps.

Blockbuster

Phone sales have not added up to a blockbuster, however observers say progress has been decent for a new entrant. Microsoft said at the end of January that phone manufacturers bought 2 million software licenses for Windows Phone 7. Microsoft has not given numbers on how many clients have bought phones with the software installed on it.

Google said its Android platform is growing by 300,000 phones a day, and analysts expect Android to become the dominant smartphone platform this year.

The mobile-smartphone market share in 2010

Microsoft had 5 percent of the mobile-smartphone market share in 2010, according to technology firm IDC in Framingham, Mass., and is expected to grow to 5.5 percent in 2011.

Symbian, Nokia's operating system, had the largest share with 37 percent in 2010 however it's expected to fall to 21 percent this year. Android, which had 23 percent share in 2010, is expected to grow to 40 percent. Innovation In Motion's Blackberry, which had 16 percent in 2010, is projected to fall slightly to 15 percent. Apple iPhone's iOS, with 16 percent share in 2010, is expected to stay level in 2011.

Research firm Gartner in Stamford, Conn., released similar projections for Microsoft and Android growth on Thursday, however predicted iPhone would grow by a few percentage points.

Will Stofega, IDC analyst, said what could change everything is the Microsoft-Nokia partnership announced in February, an arrangement that has but to be completed and which hasn't produced phones people can buy. During Nokia's smartphones are not as popular in the U.S., the Finnish phone maker has immense market share in the rest of the world.

"What everybody is waiting for is for all that the big bang," Stofega said. He thinks Microsoft could move into second place behind Android in 2015 if the partnership comes out the way the companies say it will.

Neither company has said when Nokia would begin selling Windows Phone 7 units. Stofega says he expects large numbers of those sales to start in the first half of 2012.