Microsoft To Woo Windows Phone 7 DevelopersMicrosoft To Woo Windows Phone 7 Developers

Microsoft this week will attempt to convince software developers that it's worth their time and effort to create applications for its Windows Phone 7 platform.

The software maker's MIX 11 conference, in Las Vegas from April 12-14, will feature keynotes and sessions devoted to the relatively new mobile OS, which represents what many analysts believe is Microsoft's last chance to make a dent in a market dominated by the Apple iPhone and, more recently, devices powered by Google's Android OS.

Microsoft recently said it now has more than 11,000 apps for Windows Phone 7. While that sounds like a healthy number at first blush, it pales in comparison to the 350,000 iPhone apps currently available and the more than 100,000 apps now claimed by Google for Android. Windows Phone 7 also conspicuously lacks officially sanctioned apps from a number of major content providers, including The Wall Street Journal and Fox News.

Microsoft will try to change that at MIX 11 with a series of keynotes and sessions that aim to convince attendees that Windows Phone 7 will gain the critical mass that developers--particularly those from big publishing houses and studios who are faced with a mushrooming field of devices they need to support--require before committing to a platform.

Central to the pitch will be a keynote to be delivered Tuesday by Windows Phone program director Joe Belfiore. Belfiore will no doubt discuss the status of recent updates for Windows Phone 7, including the NoDo patch, which mainly adds a copy & paste function. The NoDo rollout is now in progress but was delayed due to a glitch in an earlier patch that, ironically, was designed to ensure that future updates go smoothly.

Belfiore is also expected to provide news on Mango, an update that should be available later this year that adds Internet Explorer 9 and support for HTML 5 hardware acceleration to Windows Phone 7.

But developers' main focus will likely be on what Belfiore says, or doesn't say, about the status of Microsoft's recently announced partnership with Nokia. Nokia, which still ships more handsets than any other phone manufacturer, agreed to use Windows Phone 7 as the default OS for its smartphone lineup.

Neither Nokia nor Microsoft has provided a solid timetable on when Windows-based Nokia phones will show up in the market, and have yet to hammer out all the details of their alliance. Still, market watcher Gartner predicts the deal will eventually make Microsoft the number two player in the smartphone wars, ahead of Apple's iOS and trailing only Google Android by 2015, "solely by virtue of Microsoft's alliance with Nokia," according to a research note issued last week by the firm.

Belfiore's keynote session is slated for 9:00 a.m. PDT on Tuesday.