Ovum predicts that Microsoft's mobile OS will rise from 4.5 percent market share in 2012 to 13 percent by 2017 on the back of a reported $1 billion marketing campaign to raise its profile among consumers.

The cash will help mobile operators and developers engage with an operating system they've largely ignored until now but it is the software's integration with Microsoft's other platforms, Windows 8 and the Xbox system, that will start to deliver much of the improvement, Ovum said.

"While there is very little wrong with the software, its design is significantly different from the current status quo of the "grid of apps" user interface, and this change represents a perceived risk to potential customers," commented Ovum's senior analyst Nick Dillon.

As - which in some analyst's eyes is its first serious contender given the immaturity of previous versions - this is the sort of upbeat news Microsoft will be happy to hear.

Gartner is also reportedly upbeat about Windows Phone 8, predicting the platform could rise from today's 17.4 million global users to north of 200 million by 2016. In the same period Android will have reached a billion users while Apple will have slowed dramatically to a base of around 266 million.