Microsoft and Nokia together have looked a lot like a compressed spring from the beginning of 2011 when MS started to eye the market for mobile. Even as the world’s largest mobile manufacturer, Nokia has fallen far from its glory days but they still hang onto the capability to produce and distribute and Microsoft has an OS that they think will compete with the two major players in the ecology: Google Android and Apple iOS.

Out of the gate into 2012, Nokia shares are getting a boost from renewed interest and Credit Suisse analyst Kulbinder Garcha believes this is a sign of things to come—according to an article in Forbes he has raised his ratings of the phone manufacturer from Underperform to Outperform, to a new target of 6 Euros up from 4 Euros.

Using Nokia’s preexisting history as a powerful player in the mobile market, this may give Microsoft and Windows Phone 7 a chance to become the 3^rd major cell phone platform behind the big two.

“Longer term, we believe that Nokia can command a 13% market share within smartphones driven by Windows Phone platform based on three key factors,” he writes. “First, we see sensible and aggressive pricing from the outset with initial Lumia devices priced between €180 to €300 to carriers. Second, we see decent support for Windows ecosystem as confirmed by our recent survey of carriers. Third, we believe that the quality of Windows platform is quite good, which, combined with Nokia’s brand, distribution, scale and [intellectual property] should enable it to capture smartphone share making it the third ecosystem behind Android and Apple.”

In 2011, Nokia’s global dominance began to falter due to a changing market ecology that showed a strong dominance towards smartphones and the emergence of the iPhone (and subsidiary products) and the huge popularity of Google Android. Last February, CEO Stephen Elop published his “burning platform” memo pushing the company to completely change direction which led to multiple deals with Microsoft to smooth a path for Windows Phone 7 phones—including a $1 billion dollar deal (jumped to $2 billion) involving phone manufacture and placing the WP7 OS on new devices.

Much of this groundwork by Nokia and Microsoft have led to a great deal of attention from within the industry towards activity within those ranks.

As a result, Garcha adds that a survey of 27 key execs at global carriers have said that they’re “widely supportive of a Windows Phone/Nokia renaissance.”

He goes on to highlight the results and looking extremely glowing for the future year, “We found that 85% of carrier respondents believe that there is a need for a third ecosystem, with 77% noting that it will be Windows Phone/Nokia,” he writes. “Our survey also showed that both subsidy and volume share is expected to be markedly higher for Windows Phone over the next 12 months.”

Nokia preparing for its own renaissance

Back in Finland, Nokia obviously sees the sun rising on the horizon as they’ve recent announced that they’re boosting their smartphone potential with the acquisition of Smarterphone. Alongside that, they’ve also added a new chipset provider to help deliver them into the new year with stronger manufacturing involving processing power with ST-Ericsson—but ideally also give them an edge to deliver cheaper handsets.

During 2012, Microsoft seems poised to begin a massive advertising spree to back up its bid to enter into the marketplace. As a software-giant, Microsoft is capable of rolling out as a marketing juggernaut to get their products noticed by the market; with Nokia backing them up with their obviously still-mighty manufacturing potential and existing infrastructure for distribution and partnerships with carriers means that a Nokia/Windows Phone will have a place setting already laid out for them at the dinner table.