Microsoft has been largely absent from the smartphone market during its most-recent years of explosive growth, but market watchers predict the company will soon start to gain share after Monday's

launch.

At an event in San Francisco, Joe Belfiore, corporate vice president of Microsoft and head of its phone division, presented new features of the operating system that will be featured in phones that are expected go on sale later this year.

The software presents a very different home screen from the rows of icons found on Apple or Android phones and is a key design feature of the operating system.

Its design uses the same active tiles found on Windows 8, Microsoft's new PC operating system that launched Friday. The tiles are constantly changing with fresh information so, for example, a weather tile will update with the latest forecast while the email app will show the latest message received.