Microsoft’s platform for app development in starting to grow on developers, as recent figures indicate that the Windows Phone 7 app toolkit has been downloaded by 1.5 million times.  Microsoft is catching up on the number of available apps, currently having 11,500 in comparison with Apple’s 350,000 and Google’s 150,000. The toolkit’s 1.5 million downloads have been done by 36,000 registered developers, adding to this number the 1,200 new developers that register each week. The uneven ration between Apple’s, Google’s and Microsoft’s number of apps is explained by the latter’s emphasis on focusing on quality rather quantity when developing and releasing apps:

‘We’ve been very focused on the quality of the apps in the Marketplace since we first announced the platform one year ago, and we’ve done this by doing what we do best for developers; giving them great tools, tons of sample code and unparalleled support through our incredible Developer & Platform Evangelism team. As a result, we’ve got apps; thousands of them. In fact our ecosystem generated 10,000 apps faster than anyone else, without padding the stats.’

Add to these blossoming figures the recent partnership between Nokia and Microsoft, a large effort to break out the domination of Apple and Google devices on the mobile phone market. Each party of the partnership will make its own contribution: Nokia with its customer base and distribution channels and Microsoft with the software and developers. India is known as an emergent developer market and here Microsoft organized various developer events in order to attract their attention. Another advantage for Microsoft in drawing in Indian developers in Nokia’s outsourcing activities in the peninsula that will greatly benefit Microsoft after the deal with Nokia.

IDC analysts envisage a sound chance for Nokia to aid Microsoft in covering 20.9 percent of the global market by 2015. At the same time Gartner Research analysts predicted the WP7 would cover 3.9 percent of the global market by the end of 2014, a forecast that will be revised next week. ABI Research, on the other hand, foresees Nokia as covering only 7 percent of the market by 2016. As puzzling as all these forecasts might be, it is certain that Nokia’s Symbian platform will play an important role as well. Nokia will have to decide which side to join, either the Symbian or the Windows. By focusing on Symbian, Nokia will continue what has already started, but the Windows platform will enable Nokia to  bring a new flavour to its smartphones:

“The Microsoft partnership would also provide opportunities for new revenue sources from the combination of various services, such as our location-based assets, with Microsoft’s broader search engine and advertising platform,” Nokia told the SEC.