Microsoft has received some good reviews for Windows Phone 7, but when it comes to market share, it is still lagging behind Android and Apple. There is still an opportunity for Microsoft to seize the mobile and tablet market when Nokia will move most of its smartphones platforms to run on Windows Phone 7, though many are still apprehensive of this team up.

Last week Microsoft released the manufacturing (RTM) build of Windows Phone 7 Mango, the latest update of the mobile platform. The release features new voice-to-text capabilities to allow users to use their voice in searching Bing, navigating maps, starting an application in the middle of a call, and turning on the speakerphone.

Microsoft has been working a lot around its top ventures, dominated by its desktop Operating System, and is still going strong with its Windows 7 operating system. It has sold more than 400 million copies of Windows 7 since it launched.  According to forecasts from analysts at Gartner, Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system will be running on 42 percent of PCs by the end of the year. Research director of Gartner, Annette Jump, said,

“By the end of 2011, nearly 635 million new PCs worldwide are expected to be shipped with Windows 7. Many organizations have been planning their deployment of Windows 7 for the last 12 to 18 months, and are now moving rapidly to Windows 7.”

Standard and Poor’s (S&P) downgraded the US credit rating from AAA to AA+ last week, but companies like Microsoft still carrying the AAA rating.  S&P said in a statement today, “Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Automatic Data Processing Inc., the four U.S.-based non- financial companies rated AAA, will retain the highest rating. The companies are expected to pay their debts even if the U.S. defaults.”

Gartner also forecasts that most big corporates would be using alternative client computing architectures such as virtualization, cloud solutions, tablets and other vendor products when they plan to migrate their systems from Windows 7.  The mobile platform has been on the market for almost 2 years now, and there’s likely to be a gradual decrease of its sales over the next quarters.  Microsoft will have to bet on new businesses to drive growth and Windows 8 would come as a rescue path for this goal.

Windows 8, which will launch sometime in the second or third quarter of 2012, will have lots of Windows Phone 7 features to make it friendlier to tablet users. It will boost the features of both computers and tablets.

Microsoft is clearly trying very hard to match with the other mobile operating systems lead by Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. Companies like Samsung, Apple, Dell, and HP are concentrating more on their product developments across PC, tablets and smartphone devices. On the other hand, Microsoft sees opportunity in integration of more devices to one device to make more viable solution. Microsoft is positioning Windows Phone with Xbox sLive integration as the next mobile gaming solution. Integrating Tablets features to its Windows 8, Microsoft is hoping to capture a large share of the still nascent tablet market.