Every year since 1999, when Microsoft first said it would produce a mobile-device version of its Windows operating system, the company has used Europe’s annual industry gathering to take swipes at Symbian, maker of the leading software platform for smartphones. that year’s Mobile World Congress is no different. On Feb. 10, as some 50,000 society gathered for the opening of the show in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft was crowing that Windows Mobile would be used in a new line of phones by Sony Ericsson, a Symbian shareholder and major producer of Symbian handsets.

In winning Sony Ericsson as a customer, Microsoft can now claim that Windows Mobile runs phones made by four out of five of the world’s top handset makers. “There is a steady movement from Symbian to Microsoft,” says Scott Horn, director of Microsoft’s Mobile & Embedded Device Div.

To be certain, Microsoft is making progress against Symbian. About 13 percent of the smartphones shipped

that year are expected to be Windows Mobile devices, up from a 9 percent market share in 2007, estimates Richard Windsor, a wireless analyst at the brokerage firm Nomura. Yet even whether Symbian is losing some ground, the platform’s market share is still expected to total a commanding 48 percent that year. More significant, it’s unlikely Microsoft will ever snag Nokia, the controlling shareholder in the Symbian consortium and additionally the world’s largest cell-phone maker with a 40 percent market share.

How Deep Will the Relationship Be?

Microsoft paints its announcement with Sony Ericsson on the new Xperia line as a major coup, explaining that it plans to collaborate with the handset vendor on mobile browsing, music, and other media, a move that may help both companies better straddle the line amidst phones for business users and sophisticated consumers, or so-called prosumers. The X1, the first Xperia phone,…

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